


tear these old walls down

by susiecarter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Bad Flirting, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, Identity Porn, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kidnapping, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Post-Avengers (2012), Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 57,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29883000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Steve didn't like Tony Stark.Stark probably didn't like Steve, either. They'd gotten off on the wrong foot, and that was putting it mildly.And having to pretend to be a civilian Stark was dating, as cover for trying to save Stark's life while Iron Man was busy with a SHIELD mission, obviously wasn't going to help.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 69
Kudos: 254
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fluffypanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffypanda/gifts), [erawebuilt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erawebuilt/gifts), [hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiasobi_writes/gifts), [t0nystark1er](https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0nystark1er/gifts), [betheflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/gifts), [ishipallthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishipallthings/gifts), [Lacrimula_Falsa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacrimula_Falsa/gifts), [only_more_love](https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_more_love/gifts), [camydi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/camydi/gifts), [silvergreen98](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvergreen98/gifts).



> First off, thank you a million times over to everyone in the group who bid on me—both for choosing to bid on me in the first place for such an amazingly generous amount, AND THEN ALSO for being so incredibly patient with me when a) edits to this story and b) my life kind of blew up on me at the same time. /o\ You couldn't have given me a prompt I'd have liked better—fake dating identity porn! :D!—and I'm so grateful to you all for giving me a hand with finally taking the plunge into this fandom. ♥! (And I think I got everybody this was intended to be gifted to, but if I missed someone, don't hesitate to let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.)
> 
> And some clarifying notes on the tags: as is probably obvious from the "identity porn" part, this is your average "Tony Stark delivered the SHIELD cover story he was given instead of telling the world he was Iron Man" AU. In my heart, it lives in a happy timeline where SHIELD is SHIELD instead of half secretly HYDRA, and after this everything else is also AU and goes exactly the way I personally want it to, but you can certainly read this as "Steve's POV post-Avengers where the rest of the MCU is still in the future, so some parts are positively choking on irony". This contains a lot of self-indulgent headcanon about sexuality and Steve's feelings regarding it, hence the "internalized [x]phobia" tags (and I use both here because he's simultaneously dealing with a) being attracted to men, as an issue for him in and of itself, and b) what that means wrt his sexuality overall), but there are no slurs, only attitudes and assumptions he's holding onto.
> 
> I borrowed the title from "A Clown's Heart" by Oysterband. This is set post-Avengers, pre-IM3; I did my best to get the continuity details right, but apologies in advance for the places where I didn't. :P According to the MCU Wiki, the [in-universe Press Lounge Restaurant](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Press_Lounge_Restaurant) is one of the places Fisk took Vanessa Marianna on a date in Daredevil (TV); I figured that meant it had to be pretty upscale, so that's why I used it here (it's apparently not related to the real-life Press Lounge, and I'm definitely not trying to imply Tony has any secret connections to Fisk, I swear). Madripoor is a comics-canon location, but everything else in here should be MCU-only; if 616 snuck in along the edges in spots, please forgive me. I also couldn't resist reverse-engineering AoU's "language" bit into a Steve/Tony inside joke. :D

Steve didn't like Tony Stark.

Stark probably didn't like Steve, either. They'd gotten off on the wrong foot, and that was putting it mildly.

The scepter hadn't helped. But knowing, in retrospect, that it had been doing something to them both wasn't enough to drown out the echoes of Stark's words. _You're a laboratory experiment. Everything special about you came out of a bottle._

(It had been like Stark had known. Maybe he had, in a way; maybe the scepter had guided the blow, pointed it right at the soft aching place deep down inside Steve where "4F" was still burned like a brand.

Because it hadn't been true, except in all the ways it had—all the ways it still was. How much did it matter to think the right things, to say them, to believe them so deep down you'd fight for them, if you couldn't _win_ that fight? Who Steve was hadn't changed, between Dr. Erskine picking him out and the day of the experiment. He'd been the same person. But after the experiment, he'd _mattered_. He'd made a difference; Captain America had made a difference, because Steve Rogers had never been able to, no matter how hard he'd tried—)

He didn't know whether it was the same for Stark. It was hard to imagine that it was. Stark was a consultant; he'd been on the helicarrier for the express purpose of being smart and rich. Steve telling him that was all there was to him, that he was selfish, that he wasn't a hero—it had just been underlining the differences between Stark and everyone else in that room, that was all. It had been meant as an insult, sure. But it hadn't been anything that could have gotten Stark where he lived.

And that was the real reason Steve didn't like Stark. He was sure Stark did important work, somehow or other; SHIELD wouldn't have brought him on otherwise. But at the end of the day, he wasn't an Avenger. He wasn't on the front lines. He was standing at a safe distance, letting other people do the fighting for him. Civilians were civilians, but Steve didn't put Stark in that category. He knew a draft dodger when he saw one. Stark was capable of more—at least as smart as Howard had ever been, and probably smarter. He just wasn't willing to put himself on the line, and of all the flaws the man could have had, that was one of the hardest for Steve to figure out how to forgive.

Admittedly, at the time he'd decided that much about Stark, he hadn't known what he knew now. After the Battle of New York, Steve had learned about Howard's death, Stark's age when it had happened; that Stark had been on the front lines after all, had been changed by it and had changed his company, too.

That should have made it easier to understand why Stark was the way he was—why he wasn't interested in risking himself, why he'd lent his bodyguard to SHIELD instead. It made sense, and it was fair enough. Steve had resolved to be politer to Stark, more considerate. To remember that Stark had been through more than enough to shatter a man's nerves. Steve had seen what shell shock could do to good men, and he'd never been unkind to any of them for it.

It was just that Stark made it so hard to be kind. Stark didn't _seem_ shattered. He didn't seem shattered, and he didn't seem reformed; he didn't seem like someone who'd rearranged his life around making the world a better place, no matter what half the articles on the present-day Stark Industries wanted Steve to think. (The other half said such bizarre things about wars and how to fight them that Steve had figured out pretty quickly they weren't worth the time it took to read them.)

Besides, Stark didn't seem to take kindness well even when Steve did manage it. He had an arrogant face. Sardonic eyes, a snide mouth. That was why everything he said had an edge on it, came out flippant or dismissive or both. The harder Steve tried to keep a grip on his temper, the more pointedly Stark needled him. Steve hated that, too.

(It got worse, for a little while, after Miss Potts. Steve hadn't meant to find out, but he had—and he'd tried to offer his sympathies, but the only thing he'd been thinking was what a surprise it wasn't. The miracle was how long Miss Potts had put up with Stark in the first place, not that she'd finally had enough.

Maybe Stark had been able to see it in his face. Maybe that was why he'd looked at Steve the way he had. He'd only given Steve about two seconds to feel a sudden sharp prick of guilt, before he'd opened his mouth and started being infuriating again. But Steve still thought about that moment sometimes, and felt the cold pit open up in his stomach all over again—that he'd promised Dr. Erskine he'd be a good man, and with Stark he didn't think he had been.)

But the worst thing Stark had done, the thing Steve resented the most, he hadn't even done to Steve.

He'd done it to Iron Man.

Iron Man wasn't like Stark at all. Iron Man was incredible.

Working on the helicarrier's engine—that was the first time Steve had seen Iron Man in action. He'd been told Stark's bodyguard wore armor, flight-capable, and had the technical know-how to figure out what was wrong and get that rotor going again.

But he hadn't expected that gleaming red-gold figure, the easy grace of it. That armor looked heavy as anything, but it moved like it wasn't, like the man inside was lighter than air. Exactly the kind of thing the future had been supposed to have in it, Steve had thought at the time, instead of phones that were smarter than people and nothing on the moon but flags.

Iron Man was smart, and strong. Capable. But beyond any of that—he was definitely a good man.

Steve had been bewildered by the engine control panel. _It seems to run on some form of electricity._ He'd gotten the words out, kept his tone wry and even. But he'd felt, for a moment, inescapably helpless. Useless. Even the parts of him that _had_ come out of a bottle couldn't help him with this, couldn't make this complicated new world make sense.

But Iron Man hadn't said any of that. _You're not wrong_ , and the barest staticky huff of breath. As if he understood. As if he understood, and it somehow wasn't exactly the wrong time for him to be stuck with someone whose comprehension of technology was sixty years out of date. As if it was all right, and he didn't mind, and Steve was _funny_ , of all things.

Steve had fought so hard for so long trying to get himself taken seriously. He hadn't thought there would ever be a day when he'd be glad somebody was laughing at him.

Iron Man had talked Steve through it a step at a time, explaining what the overload position should look like and how to identify each relay. He hadn't sent Steve away, hadn't asked for somebody else. He'd believed Steve could be useful, even when he didn't know what the hell he was doing—he'd believed Steve wasn't so lost in this unexpected future that he couldn't help. _Steve_ hadn't believed that, not until Iron Man had proven it was true.

And Iron Man had pushed the rotor back into motion with his own two hands, and hadn't cared what might happen to his sleek gleaming armor because of it. He'd put himself at risk to get that engine going again, without hesitation.

Point was, he'd been climbing pretty high in Steve's estimation even before the Battle of New York. All that fight had done was make Steve sure he'd been right about whoever was inside that suit.

Iron Man had been the one to hand him control of the team—to trust him with them, with their lives. _Call it, Captain._ As if there were no doubt in his mind that Steve could handle this, even when "this" meant "alien soldiers falling out of a hole in the sky".

That had been the first time Steve had really felt like he'd known what he was doing, where he belonged, in the future.

The Avengers weren't the Howling Commandos. Steve could never go back.

But they were a team, and Steve was their commanding officer, and maybe—maybe, if he tried hard enough, someday he might figure out how to go forward.

And then, as if that hadn't been enough, Iron Man had lain down on the wire and let the entire city of New York crawl over him, and for a minute there—

For a minute there, Steve had thought the worst. That he'd lost the best man he'd met since he woke up, just that quickly. Even when Iron Man had fallen back through the portal, moments before it had closed—he'd been _falling_ , terminal velocity, no indication that the man inside that suit was still alive.

And then the Hulk had caught him, caught him and brought him to ground level and laid him down. Screamed at him, furious, and Steve had been grateful for it, throat too tight to scream himself, because it had felt like such an excruciating waste to lose a man like that.

A moment's stillness, all of them gathered in painful silence—and then Iron Man had startled up, gasping hoarse bursts of static, saying _What the hell?_

Steve hadn't smiled that wide since he woke up. But he hadn't been able to stop it, crouched down beside Iron Man in a street full of rubble, a city still on fire around them.

There had been something selfish in it, that relief. He'd been glad for Iron Man's sake, of course; nobody who was willing to give up their life for others ever deserved to have to, as far as Steve was concerned. And he'd been glad for the team's sake. It was never easy to lose good men in battle, and the Avengers had already suffered a blow in Coulson—it didn't matter how high the odds had been stacked against them, what a miracle it was that the six of them had gone up against armies, ground troops and air support and battleships the size of whales. Losing any one of them would've hit harder than they could have withstood, brand-new and just starting to figure out how to trust each other with their lives.

But he'd been glad for his own sake, too. Glad, in the abstract, not to have taken on a new team and immediately gotten one of them killed, unable to prevent it, unable to do anything but watch—unable to trade places with Iron Man, and God knew he would have if he could have. And deeper, in his bones, in his raw, tired heart, glad not to have lost one of the terrifyingly small number of things that were now familiar to him, in a world that wasn't. To have that proof that no matter how much had changed, there were still people who were made out of something Steve recognized, something good and brave, something worth defending.

If he'd never seen Iron Man again, never worked with him again, it wouldn't have mattered. That pair of moments, each cutting sharper in his memory for the contrast between them, would never leave him: understanding what Iron Man was doing, staring up at the tiny glittering shape of him in the sky and going cold with dread; and understanding that they hadn't lost him after all, sweet bright relief brimming so high it couldn't help but spill over. Steve would have remembered each of them forever anyway.

But as it was, agreeing to work with SHIELD, knowing he and Iron Man were going out there together again sooner or later, it meant ten times more. He'd been looking forward to getting to know every single one of the Avengers. But he'd felt as though he already knew Iron Man, in the ways that mattered most.

And Stark—

Stark had brushed the whole thing off like it was nothing.

They'd gone for shawarma—Iron Man's suggestion, even though he couldn't eat any of it with his helmet's faceplate down. He probably had good reasons to keep himself hidden; had to be risky, being in charge of personal security for somebody as famous—and infamous—as Stark. Steve had already decided not to push him on it. But that hadn't made it any less awkward, eating right in front of him when he had to be just as hungry, just as tired, as the rest of them.

So Steve had gotten a couple orders boxed up for him before leaving the joint. And later, trying to track Iron Man down on the helicarrier so he could hand them over, he'd run into Stark.

For a minute, he'd almost found himself wanting to be careful with the man. Stark had looked absolutely awful, pale and exhausted, gaze tracking a beat behind.

But he'd snorted, sheer strung-out amusement more honest than anything Steve had ever heard out of his mouth before, when Steve had asked him where Iron Man was.

"Yeah? Moonlighting already, huh. SHIELD stipend that bad? You, uh, you do delivery now. That's—amazing, actually, I should've thought of that years ago—"

"Mr. Stark," Steve had said, as evenly as he'd been able to manage when he'd been abruptly choking on his own frustration. Why couldn't Stark ever just answer a damn question? Why did he always have to waste everybody's time, as if no one had anything more important to do than listen to him carry on?

"Right, right, you're looking for," Stark had said, and then he'd coughed. "Iron Man. Right. He's busy in the workroom—they gave me a workroom a deck up, it's pretty sick," which had sounded bad to Steve except Stark had said it as though it was a compliment. "So I'll just—I can take that. To him." Stark had gone uncharacteristically quiet for a second. "He'll appreciate it, Cap."

"I hope he knows _I_ appreciate it," Steve had countered. Suddenly the boxes in his hands had seemed pathetic, inadequate. A stupid awkward joke, in place of the recognition Iron Man deserved—deserved, and probably wasn't going to get, given that nobody was going to want to publicize the fact that a nuclear weapon had almost hit New York City. "What he did out there today saved millions of lives, Mr. Stark. Shawarma seemed like the least I could do."

And Stark had looked at him, blinking, and laughed.

 _Laughed_. He'd shaken his head, reaching up to rub absently at the back of his neck, and then he'd said, "Oh, come on. He was doing what he had to do, it's not—you probably punched nukes out of the sky once a week. Or, you know, you would have if they'd invented them with a little more lead time before you went in the ice, and that's probably not a subject you were looking to talk about right now." He'd cleared his throat and taken the boxes out of Steve's unresponsive grip, and Steve had, distantly, powerfully, wanted to punch him in the face.

Steve probably could have figured out how to forgive Stark for everything else, sooner or later. For sitting back and watching everyone else put their lives on the line to save the world, for refusing to step up and do the kinds of things Steve could tell he was capable of. For—for _wasting_ himself, wasting everything he was and everything he could be, because he'd rather stand by offering snide commentary on the hard work of others.

But not for doing it and having the nerve to be so goddamn flippant about the people who'd stepped up in his place.

"With all due respect, Mr. Stark," Steve had said, "he's worth a hundred of you."

He hadn't had words, still didn't, for the expression that had flashed across Stark's face. And then Stark's mouth had twisted, and—

Well, it had gone downhill from there.

Steve could, with the distance of hindsight, admit that he'd gotten mean. Snappish, judgmental. He'd never been the kind of person who could hide it, when he was angry.

Not that Stark could hide it either, but he didn't show it the same way Steve did. He didn't get tight around the face, the jaw, and he didn't start speaking louder, more sharply. He did everything he'd already done that had infuriated Steve in the first place, and he did it _harder_. His voice got lazier, his tone more and more dismissive. He laughed harder, showed bright teeth over and over. It was only his eyes that got cold and sharp, that fixed on Steve like they'd taken his measure and found him wanting.

Steve couldn't regret snapping at him. Steve couldn't regret judging him.

He damn well deserved it.

Iron Man was one of the best things Steve had found in this millennium. And listening to Tony Stark disdain everything that made Iron Man exceptional had been the moment Steve had understood—he didn't like Stark, and that was never going to change.

* * *

Steve had done half a dozen more missions for SHIELD since the Battle of New York. He was used to being called in by Fury.

But usually it was just Fury. Sometimes Hill, now that—now that Coulson was no longer an option.

So the second Steve stepped into the briefing room and saw Natasha sitting at the table, he knew something was up.

"Sir," he said to Fury, with a nod, and then looked at Natasha; her mouth slanted just a little, gaze steady. Which meant that whatever was coming probably wasn't a complete disaster. But it _was_ something Natasha thought was funny. And that was bone-chilling in its own way, Steve thought wryly. He raised his eyebrows at her, just a fraction, and she let her expression widen into an actual smile.

"Captain," Fury said. "I'll keep it simple. SHIELD needs your help with a—somewhat unusual assignment."

"I'll do my best, sir," Steve said automatically, taking a seat.

"I'd like to hold you to that," Fury said, "but I think you'd better hear the details before you decide. We've got a consultant receiving serious threats, and we're hoping you'd be willing to serve as a bodyguard."

Steve blinked. "A bodyguard," he repeated, and glanced at Natasha again. "Why me?"

"Frankly?" Fury pressed his mouth into a line; he was genuinely unhappy, Steve understood. And sure, of course he was—if there was danger to SHIELD personnel serious enough that he believed it required an Avenger to be in place, he was probably mad as a wet hornet. He had to be, to let any of it show where Steve could pick up on it. "The situation we're facing demands both a high level of skill and a high level of secrecy. I can't assign just anyone to take care of this, and I'd prefer someone with capabilities higher than baseline if I can get it." He gave Steve an eloquent look, lone eye intent. "However, it would also be preferable if it weren't someone immediately identifiable to the general public. Since Agents Romanoff and Barton got their pretty faces plastered all over the news—"

"You think Barton's pretty?" Natasha murmured, bland. "He'll be so excited to hear it, sir."

"—they're no longer ideal options," Fury went on pointedly. "We're working on technical equipment that could fix that, but it isn't ready to be deployed in the field. It would be of immense operational benefit for the parties behind these threats to remain unaware that SHIELD is increasing security in response."

"So you want me," Steve said, "to go undercover?"

"You were captured on camera," Fury said, "but only in your cowl, Captain. Right now, everybody out there believes we revamped Captain America's gear and found a new guy to stick inside of it, and we're happy to keep it that way."

Steve tilted his head, and thought about it for a second. "Because that way," he agreed coolly, "it looks like you figured out how to reformulate the serum."

"People make assumptions," Fury said. "If they're assumptions that give SHIELD an advantage, then I'm not in any rush to set them straight." He paused, sighing a slow breath through his nose. "Look, I understand that this isn't the kind of mission you're used to being asked to take on. There are plenty of talented agents I can assign in your place. But frankly, Cap, if the worst should happen—I'd rather have someone in place who's able to survive it, if at all possible."

There was no way Steve could disagree with that. And Fury probably knew it; that was probably why he'd said it. But that didn't make it less true. If Steve turned him down, and the SHIELD agent that got sent instead were killed—Steve couldn't stand to think of it.

"The list of reasons we can't send in the Hulk is as long as my arm," Fury was saying, "and it starts with Banner having shown his face every time he's detransformed and ends with the odds he'd get pissed off and smash our consultant just as flat as the bad guys. Even if Thor weren't ludicrously recognizable, he's still off-planet at the moment. As noted, Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff are disqualified."

"And Iron Man's busy guarding Stark," Steve finished for him.

Fury's expression flickered. "Funny you should bring that up," he said flatly, sounding like it wasn't funny at all. "Iron Man would ordinarily be the natural choice, but Stark's lent him to us for a series of high-value SHIELD operations that require his specific capabilities. He'll be unavailable for the most mission-critical period."

Great. Steve bit back a sigh.

He had to say yes. Fury had been clear about the degree of risk; Steve couldn't insist on anyone else taking that risk, when he had the opportunity to take it instead. Fury was telling him there was a grenade in front of him, and Steve knew what to do with grenades.

But—God. How could he? He'd never done anything like this before. The closest Captain America had come to undercover work was leading stealth assaults against Nazi compounds, and they hadn't stayed stealth assaults for long. Half his value was in the uniform, the identity: the inescapable awareness that Captain America was here, and his fist was aimed at _you_ this time.

Except Fury was telling him he was going to have to take off the uniform. And Steve didn't know what the hell that meant—what was going to be left once he did.

"What's the cover?" he said, and if it was as transparent a stall as it felt like, at least Natasha and Fury had the courtesy not to treat it that way.

"Optimally," Fury said evenly, "an ongoing intimate relationship. Flexible enough to cover multiple eventualities, allows constant access, explains your presence just about anywhere in proximity to the consultant."

Even better. This was going to be awkward. The only woman Steve would've felt comfortable pretending at any kind of intimacy with was Natasha, and whoever this consultant was, it clearly wasn't her. Hill—but no, she was an agent, too.

There had to be some kind of backup plan. Fury had said _optimally_. And Fury wasn't stupid; surely he wouldn't bet this entire operation on Steve's ability to fake romantic interest in someone he'd never met.

Although presumably that was going to be taken care of before they got underway.

Steve braced himself. "What's her name?"

Whoever it was, he wasn't going to let her get murdered. No matter what he had to do.

Fury looked at him, and then at Natasha. Natasha looked back, and raised both her eyebrows. That was an expression Steve recognized: Natasha relaxed, blandly amused, saying with every inch of her face, _Better you than me, pal_.

Fury cleared his throat.

And then, behind Steve, the briefing room door swung open.

"Hey, hi, sorry, sorry. Fashionably late, that's me," Tony Stark said with a smile, tipping his sunglasses down with one hand so he could beam false warmth over the tops of the frames. "Don't tell me you started without me? Fury, Nick—I can call you Nick, right? We decided I could call you Nick?—you're breaking my heart."

"Mr. Stark," Fury said flatly.

And the second Steve met Natasha's eyes—wry, now, level and even a little apologetic—he knew.

He didn't want to know. He couldn't—God. He swallowed hard, throat dry, gut twisting. No. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible. Stark was a consultant for SHIELD, sure, but that didn't mean anything. That didn't have to mean anything. He was probably here for something else; maybe Fury had asked him for some kind of special equipment for Steve to use while he was on this assignment, microscopic comms or—or an invisible shield.

They couldn't—they didn't know. There was no way. They couldn't possibly have picked Steve for this because they'd figured out that he—that he was—

At least Stark wasn't a stranger, he thought distantly, and for a wild, frightening instant he almost wanted to laugh.

No. They didn't know. Fury would've picked a different Avenger if he could have; he'd said so. This was an assignment, and Steve was the best person for it, and Fury had no idea exactly how true that was.

But what the hell kind of _cover_ was—

"Are you serious?" he said aloud, before he could stop himself.

They all looked at him. Stark, with blank bewilderment, because he probably had absolutely no idea what conversation he'd just walked into the middle of; Natasha, with her face abruptly shuttered and still; and Fury, with sudden searching intensity.

"Yes, Captain Rogers," Fury said. "I'm always serious."

"Serious about what?" Stark said. "Anybody feel like clueing me in, here?"

"You're getting a new bodyguard, Stark. Since Iron Man's going to be busy. Now until the expo."

"What?" Stark said, and then his whole face changed. "Oh, come on. Iron Man's—"

"—not going to be able to _guard you_ from this, Mr. Stark," Fury enunciated, with transparently forced calm.

"Okay, Mrs. Doubtfire, I appreciate the spirit behind your relentless nannying, but what does that have to do with our beloved national icon over here?"

Steve felt his face heat, involuntary. It was a stupid reaction; Stark was just being snide. But right here, right now, it struck Steve in an odd raw place, to hear Stark use that word of all words— _beloved_ , even though Stark didn't mean a syllable of it—about him.

Luckily for him, Stark didn't seem to notice. He was still busy staring at Fury with his eyebrows creeping their way toward his hairline.

"If he agrees," Fury said, "then he's taking on the job."

"He's—"

"I don't understand," Steve said.

It came out hoarse, too loud, half overlapping with Stark's voice. But Stark fell silent, and Steve said it again.

"I don't understand, sir. How is—" God, he couldn't even figure out how to say it. People had always talked about it, sure, but it was—the army, the chorus girls. Nobody brought it up in front of _officers_ , for crying out loud. "—that cover story any kind of cover?"

It was common sense. Something like that wasn't a thing you used to cover up a secret; it _was_ the secret. Something like that was only going to draw attention straight to them, get them arrested or worse—

"Things are different now, Steve," Natasha said quietly.

Steve looked at her, throat tight.

She seemed serious. She seemed like she meant it.

Even after all the ways the future had proven itself different already, Steve hadn't expected—but it was a good thing, he told himself, swallowing. If people were kinder about it now, more forgiving. If it wasn't a criminal offense anymore, if everyone was allowed to just go about their business, that was good. That was better.

It didn't mean he could—it didn't mean he was going to—

"Oh, _that_ cover story," Stark said easily, and slung himself into the chair across from Steve. He leaned sideways in it, elbow propped against the edge of the table, fingers playing lightly over his chin, and he was smiling, smiling, but his eyes were hard and unreadable and fixed on Steve. "Really, Nick? The boytoy ploy is the best you've got?"

"Stark—"

"And you just sprang it on poor Captain Tightpants with no warning." Stark shaped his mouth into a moue of false sympathy; Steve was abruptly uncomfortably conscious of his own gaze, because looking at it and making sure not to look at it both seemed fraught with too much meaning. "For the record, Rogers, it's not illegal these days. And in my case in particular, everybody got their chance to be scandalized years ago, what with the ten million shots of me and my on-again off-again boyfriend in college. It's old news. But hey, it's cool. You come from a different time, you've got _principles_ ," and the way he said the word made it sound like it meant something other than what it should, something small and pitiable. "You're an upstanding, decent, all-American guy, of course you couldn't stand to have anybody think you were—"

"Tony," Natasha said, sharp for the first time.

"It's fine," Steve said.

It was almost reflex, by now: to contradict Stark, to prove him wrong. But it was the truth, too. Steve's heart was still tripping just a little too fast, his fingertips still buzzing, but the first sharp shock of comprehension was starting to wear off.

He still had all the same reasons to agree that he'd had a minute ago. He didn't want a SHIELD consultant dead, even if that consultant was Stark. He didn't want a SHIELD agent dead, either, if he could prevent it. And—

And protesting too fiercely, too insistently, only made a man look guiltier. Steve knew that much.

It was fine. They didn't know. It was a pretext to give him a reason to keep Stark company, and in a way it was a gift—if he did make a mistake, it wouldn't give him away, because he could claim he'd been acting deliberately.

Besides, it wasn't going to be Captain America who was stepping out with Stark. It was going to be some nobody, whatever featureless cover identity SHIELD had worked up. Nothing to do with Steve himself.

And in a sense, that made it the safest Steve was ever going to be, in this particular respect. Which meant there was no good reason why that thought should feel like an albatross around his neck.

He drew a quick breath, let it out, and met Stark's eyes. He'd performed in front of audiences of thousands, and he wasn't a circus monkey anymore; at least this time, it was going to serve a meaningful purpose.

"It's fine," he repeated, as firm and calm and sure as he could make it. "I can handle it," which was both true and not true at all, but Stark never needed to know the difference. "I was under the impression it wouldn't serve our operational goals, but it seems that impression was mistaken. I should've realized SHIELD wouldn't commit a strategic error on that scale, but I was—surprised."

"You looked like you were going to have a heart attack," Stark said, and then, in tones of mock reassurance, "Look, if it helps, I can _promise_ you you won't catch it off me—"

"Of course I won't," Steve managed, swallowing down a fresh urge to laugh. "It's not a disease, Mr. Stark."

That much, Steve was absolutely sure of.

He cleared his throat, and looked away from Stark's startled, skeptical face. "There are significant threats against Mr. Stark's life?"

"Yes," Fury said.

Stark gave up on leaving his sunglasses tipped down his nose and whipped them off entirely, apparently for the sole satisfaction of making sure it was unmistakably visible when he rolled his eyes. "Listen, if I had a dime for every death threat I've ever gotten, I'd be—well, twice as rich as I already am, I guess. Maybe three times."

"Not like these, Tony," Natasha said, mild.

Stark scoffed.

"To be clear," Fury said, pointedly directing the words to Steve as though Stark hadn't interrupted at all, "these communications include not only threats, centered around Mr. Stark's planned appearance at a tech expo that will be taking place in Madripoor in two months, but taunting references to personal information that's not available to the general public. We're still trying to account for everyone who knows Stark well enough to be aware of it, or anyone with whom they might have shared it—"

"An effort no doubt complicated by the part where a bunch of your prime suspects kicked the bucket years ago," Stark murmured, less under his breath and more a stage whisper.

"— _but_ some of them are foreign nationals, criminals involved with previous attempts on Mr. Stark's life, or both, which makes our job more difficult." Fury paused for a beat. "Much like Mr. Stark himself."

Stark sighed. "Come on, Nick, this is ridiculous," he said. "No need to risk Cap's virtue. Iron Man can handle this—"

"Iron Man can _not_ handle this," Fury told him very evenly, "because Iron Man is not going to be available for the duration during which you are likely to be in the greatest danger. Mr. Stark."

Stark covered his face with his hands, and then rubbed his eyes for a long moment with the heels of them; his mouth was working, caught somewhere between frustration and amusement.

"Don't let Tony fool you," Natasha said. "This is serious, Steve. I'd do it if I could—"

"So the romance isn't dead after all, Rushman?" Stark said, incomprehensible, giving Natasha a unnecessarily intent look through his eyelashes.

"—but I can't," Natasha went on serenely. "Not with my public profile as high as it is right now. I'll be recognized, and whoever it is, they'll know we're on to them." She stopped—didn't hesitate, just stopped, because this was Natasha, and she'd probably figured out what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it, exactly how to deliver each word of it, a week ago.

She was about to ask, Steve thought. She was about to ask him, and she shouldn't have had to.

"It's all right," he said, before she could. "I'll do it."

"You'll do it," Fury said, satisfied.

"You'll do it?" Stark said, incredulous. "Are you kidding? Look, Rogers, there's no need to martyr yourself." His mouth twisted. "Trust me, I'm well aware you don't like me—"

"I don't," Steve agreed, as calmly as he could. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to let someone murder you, Mr. Stark."

He made himself meet Stark's eyes. He kept his chin level, his expression open; because he was telling the truth, and the best way to convince someone you were telling the truth was to let them see it.

"Because—I'm just that important to SHIELD?" Stark hazarded. "No, wait, okay, because I'm half the Avengers budget and you know it—"

It was the least sure of himself Steve had ever heard the man sound. And that this, of all things—the idea that someone he wasn't paying to do it would put themselves in harm's way to keep him safe—was what Tony Stark had no confidence in struck harder than Steve had anticipated it could.

"Because you don't deserve that, Mr. Stark," Steve said. "No matter how unbearable a jackass you are."

Stark stared at him for a long moment without saying anything.

And then he swallowed, and glanced at Fury, and said, "Well, I—suppose it wouldn't hurt to have Cap on the scene, ready to weep dramatically over my lifeless body."

"That's the spirit," Natasha told him blandly.

"Fantastic," Fury said. "Glad we're all finally on the same page here." He pointed at Stark, and then at Steve. "You start next week."

"Next—?" Stark squawked.

"Yes, next week," Fury repeated. "We want the cover established as soon as possible, and in place well before the expo. Captain Rogers is not going undercover as your arm candy or your one-night stand, Mr. Stark. His constant presence in your vicinity needs to be entirely unremarkable."

"Awesome," Stark said. "Great. Fantastic." He looked at Steve, and raised an eyebrow. "I guess we're going steady, sweetheart."

"I guess we are," Steve agreed, as evenly as he could; and he sat calmly and kept his game face on until Fury dismissed him, ignoring the relentless thundering drumbeat of his heart.

He received a complete cover identity profile the next day.

It was packaged with a threat assessment report—a write-up that covered the number of threats, their content, the dates and times of their delivery, where they appeared to have come from and the various reasons that that didn't make sense. Steve couldn't follow all of it; it seemed they were arriving digitally, sent directly to Stark, and something about the nature of the data, the details of how computers talked to each other, apparently made it clear to the SHIELD techs that they were coming from somewhere that appeared to be inside Stark Industries itself but couldn't actually exist.

There was one page that was just a list of the messages themselves. Samples, apparently only a handful, right in the middle of the part of the report where SHIELD analysts laid out their reasons for assuming all of them were coming from the same person. And Steve didn't like Stark, but he couldn't imagine sending him anything like this:

**YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE ALIVE AND YOU KNOW IT**

**THEY SHOULD HAVE CUT YOUR HEAD OFF WHEN THEY HAD THE CHANCE I WILL WHEN I'M DONE WITH YOU**

**NEVER COULD RESIST SHOWING OFF WELL I'LL GIVE YOU A SHOW**

That, Steve knew, was one of the earlier ones that had given SHIELD a reason to start looking at Stark's schedule, public events he had planned—more specific ones that had come later had helped them narrow it down to the Madripoor expo.

**SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH**

**REMEMBER HOW YOU CRIED THE DAY YOUR PARENTS DIED YOU LITTLE PRICK**

Steve stared at that one for a minute. He remembered the first time he'd searched for information about Stark on this exact device—the results had included links to video. Steve had tapped on one at first just because it had been there, just because he hadn't understood what he was going to see; and then he'd been caught by it, how young Stark had looked.

It had been from the funeral. And Stark hadn't cried at all, hadn't even looked as though he were going to. His face had been pale, his eyes dry and dark and unfocused, and he'd moved through the five minutes Steve had watched as if he were sleepwalking.

The report pointed out the same thing: Stark had never broken down publicly over his parents' deaths. Another possible indicator that this was someone close to him, or someone who'd been fed information by someone close to him.

It was the same direction Steve's thoughts had gone. But the report was so impersonally bloodless, dissecting the facts of how Stark had felt about losing both his parents on the same day when he was barely twenty-one, that Steve was suddenly viciously uncomfortable.

He closed it and flipped to the next file, and came face-to-face with a picture of himself.

It was surreal, almost, to sit there in SHIELD housing and use a SHIELD-issued tablet—which could do so many different things that Steve couldn't blame anybody for falling back on naming it after its shape—and flip through pages and pages, ID and papers and everything, for a version of himself who had no connection to SHIELD at all.

Steve Roberts. Clearly they were trying to make this easy for him, given his lack of experience. And, he supposed, there wasn't much reason to worry. There had been a spasm of interest in "Steve Rogers" after the Battle of New York, when people had seen a man in a Captain America outfit fighting aliens, and had checked their dim memories of what they'd learned in eighth-grade history about what they believed was the long-dead original. But that had mostly died off, at least according to the metrics SHIELD was tracking. Steve hadn't really been listening closely during the briefing about "Twitter engagement", whatever the hell that meant.

The point was, hardly anybody thought about Steve Rogers these days. And the ones who did thought he was dead.

So it didn't matter if Steve Roberts was seen with Tony Stark. It had nothing to do with Captain America, and it had nothing to do with Steve.

Right.

Steve rubbed a hand across his face.

Tony Stark was—gay. Unless they called it something else now. Steve had only heard the word a handful of times, and that was back in the forties. Except there was Miss Potts; was that why she'd called it quits? Because she'd found out? No, that didn't make any sense. Stark had talked about a—a boyfriend, in college. About photos, published for the world to see. Miss Potts couldn't have missed that.

Maybe that was part of it being all right now. That you could—go back and forth, instead of having to decide you'd picked one or the other. Was it normal to _want_ to go back and forth? Steve had no idea. He wasn't sure whether it was better or worse, to have that as an option. He'd thought that even if the serum hadn't fixed him, Peggy had—that he had nothing to worry about anymore, that he'd been wrong about himself after all. But maybe that wasn't true. Maybe even if you'd loved a woman as much as he'd loved Peggy, as much as Stark had loved Miss Potts, you might still—you might still find yourself wanting—

(He was an inch from breaking out in a cold sweat, thinking about trying to search for an answer on a SHIELD-issued device. Someone was bound to notice.)

Stark was a civilian. Stark was a civilian, and he was rich, and he did whatever the hell he wanted. He wasn't accountable to anybody, wasn't a symbol of anything that millions of people believed in. So—so no wonder he could get away with it, really. If he'd been willing to keep a little quieter about it, he probably could've gotten away with it back in the forties, too, as long as he hadn't been caught in a raid.

That didn't mean Steve was in the clear.

But Steve Roberts—

Steve Roberts could be whoever Steve decided he was. The profile wasn't all that comprehensive; the background information and life history were all Steve's own, through a looking glass, updated to make sense in context given a falsely plausible new birth date. Steve had wondered how much they were going to give him to work with—whether SHIELD had decided on Steve Roberts's favorite foods, choice of drinks, the kind of clothes he wore and how he kept his hair. But three-quarters of the profile packet was Steve Roberts's biography.

Because, he supposed, he was only trying to fool anyone looking from a distance. Stark knew who he was, and it was Stark he was going to be spending all his time with, Stark he was going to be talking to. He didn't need fake preferences, fake likes and dislikes; he didn't need to try to paint a portrait Stark couldn't see through. And even if he'd been supposed to try, it wasn't as though Stark was going to call him on it if he made a mistake.

Steve Roberts could be whoever Steve decided he was, except in one respect. He was—he was someone who would agree to date Tony Stark, someone who was all right with being seen doing it.

It was a cover. It was a mission. Steve had no choice but to do his duty: to pretend, with everything he had in him, that that was who he was.

He stared down at the screen of the tablet, and discovered distantly that he couldn't decide whether that was a relief, or the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to him.

* * *

Steve didn't see Stark again until it was time for their first—"date".

He'd talked to Fury beforehand, argued that Steve Roberts should make his own way downtown; a gleaming unmarked black SUV conveniently dropping him off wasn't exactly subtle. But now he was almost wishing he hadn't.

He'd probably never been less conspicuous in his life, dressed in civilian clothes, walking down the streets of a city where no one knew him anymore; even his height didn't stick out as much as it used to. People were taller in the future.

But he didn't _feel_ inconspicuous. He felt awkward, obvious. The civilian clothes, quietly provided to him by SHIELD, were more of a costume than the Cap uniform had ever been on-mission, and he was helplessly certain that everyone who looked at him could tell. They were nice, too: dark slacks, a crisp dress shirt, a jacket. Didn't seem like enough, if you were going out with someone for the first time and you wanted to make a good impression, but people didn't seem to wear ties as much in the future, either.

Making the approach was straightforward enough. He knew where he was supposed to go, and how to get there, and that Stark would be waiting for him.

But once he was inside the restaurant—once he'd sat down, across a small clean table for two from Tony Stark—he was out of mission objectives. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. He'd never really been out with anybody, unless you counted tagging along while Bucky was entertaining a date. And then there had been the war, and Peggy; he wouldn't have taken anybody else out even if he could have, and he'd only ever gotten as far as imagining it with Peggy.

He was good at thinking strategically in a combat situation, at making the most of the skills of his team. But this wasn't a fight, and there was no backup.

Stark was sitting back in his chair, watching Steve, one side of his mouth curling in an expression somewhere between pity and amusement.

Steve cleared his throat. "Good afternoon, Mr. Stark," he tried.

"Wow," Stark said. "Is that how people greeted their dates in the forties? Interesting. These days we usually try to open with a first name, a compliment, maybe some kind of expression of enthusiasm. Like, hey, Steve—" He paused for a second, and then leaned forward, affecting a too-loud whisper. "Your name is Steve, right?"

The cover identity. Right. "Yes, it's still—it's Steve," Steve managed, flushing.

"Great, fantastic, because I'd probably have screwed up about fifty times already if I had to call you something else," Stark said, and then very visibly pinned on a warm smile. "Hey, Steve, great to see you—you clean up pretty good, huh?" His gaze stayed on Steve's face, but only for a moment; he let it drop, lingering, down the parted front of Steve's jacket, the line of buttons descending Steve's chest, and Steve was abruptly glad he was seated, glad the edge of the table cut off Stark's view before it could get too far.

"Stark," Steve gritted out.

"Not that that's a surprise," Stark added, meeting Steve's eyes again. "That uniform fits you _really_ well, in case you were wondering."

" _Stark_ —"

"Hey, relax," Stark said, infuriatingly breezy. "Nobody's listening, and even if they were there's more than one kind of uniform in this world, pal." He hooked a thumb at the wide bay window beside them, facing the street; Steve could already see someone with a camera, in addition to three or four people with those phones that didn't look like phones, as if it was important to them to be able to prove they'd happened to pass by Stark while he was eating lunch. "We're here to let them sneak some shots, get the story picked up and circulating. That's it. Hard part comes later, trust me." He paused, gaze moving into the middle distance. "And I can't believe I just passed up a golden opportunity to lewdly overemphasize the word 'hard'. That is so embarrassing for me."

Steve was spared having to try to figure out how to reply by the waitress, who mercifully came to smile at them, apologize for the wait, and hand Steve a menu—Stark had one already, though he'd been ignoring it in favor of Steve.

It was actually pretty big, and it unfolded, which was perfect. Steve yanked it open and used it as shameless shelter from Stark, hiding behind it and reading every menu item twice, as if his choice of sandwich were a life-or-death decision.

(Worse, really. Life-or-death decisions, Steve could make without hesitating. He'd have been grateful for one, right now.)

He knew already that you couldn't necessarily count on Stark to take a hint; he didn't mind ignoring them, or even deliberately drawing attention to your attempts to give them to him, just to watch anyone who had an actual sense of shame squirm. Fortunately, this time Stark took pity on him and let it lie. He hummed in the back of his throat and picked up his own menu, in the edge of Steve's vision, but didn't open it; the only commentary he offered was, "FYI, the sweet potato fries here are fantastic, if you're planning to pick something that comes with a side."

"Thanks," Steve managed, and then silence successfully reigned until the waitress returned for their orders.

Steve asked for water. He hadn't intended to make a statement out of it, but Stark looked at him sharply for a second and then sighed and asked for the same, instead of whatever five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine he'd probably been planning to get.

There had been no similarly simple option for the sandwiches. Everything on the menu had had a complicated description full of ingredients Steve hadn't anticipated. He'd managed to find one that included ham—and it did come with a side, which he hoped vaguely Stark would take as an olive branch. But it felt odd and embarrassing to actually say it, with Stark watching him do it.

Stark ordered something involving avocado, roasted tomatoes, and aioli that Steve had eventually retreated from, after staring at the description uncertainly for a minute.

And then the waitress left again, and took the menus with her. Steve had to restrain a pointless urge to try to grab one back and keep it. He'd carry out this assignment, if he had to in order to save Stark's life; but he didn't want to have to _talk_ to Stark.

"Okay, come on," Stark said, after a moment. "You look like you're at parade rest, except sitting. And I worked with the military for literally decades, so I know what I'm talking about."

Steve bit down on a sigh, and made a conscious effort to relax the line of his spine and shoulders at least a fraction of an inch.

"I realize you're probably coming at this like it's one more mission for Captain America," Stark added. "But we're in this for the long haul, here. Today, we're just having lunch. I mean, granted, from your side of the table it's lunch with the Sexiest Man Alive three years running, five years total; I get that that's a lot of pressure—"

Steve snorted a breath through his nose before he could stop it, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. And he shouldn't have, he thought, because Stark was probably just going to escalate in response, except that wasn't what happened.

Stark laughed.

Actually laughed, bright, amused, not scoffing at Steve for the sake of it.

It was a nice laugh.

"There we go," Stark assessed, and Steve realized belatedly that he'd relaxed a little further, far enough that he could actually feel the chair against his back instead of sitting up too straight to touch it. "We're taking it slow here, okay? Lunch is the easiest first date in the world. Nothing to it."

Steve cleared his throat. "Right. Sure." He cast helplessly about for something to say. "These threats you're receiving—you really don't have any idea who's—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Stark interrupted, waving a hand. "Cut! No." He gave Steve a gimlet look. "You're not here in an official capacity, remember? Or, well, you are, but you're not supposed to act like it."

Steve flushed, and looked away. He wished grimly Stark hadn't called him on it; he was uncomfortably aware that the truth was he didn't know what the hell else to talk about. He didn't _have_ anything else to talk about. He couldn't begin to imagine what—what "Steve Roberts" would have had to say in a situation like this. Steve Roberts, who'd grown up in this world, who understood it. Who lived somewhere other than SHIELD quarters. Who had parents, family, friends, that weren't dead or ninety years old. Who probably had done something with his life that had nothing to do with World War II or top-secret special ops missions.

That man would have had all kinds of things to talk to Stark about. His job, his hobby. Where he lived, what he did for fun. Hell, something interesting he'd seen on TV. Shows he watched, books he read, that Stark might actually have heard of.

But Steve wasn't that man, no matter what the ID in his pocket right now had to say about it.

He should have declined. He should have told them they could figure out a way to make it work with Natasha if they had to. He couldn't—he wasn't—

"Hey," Stark said.

Steve blinked, and caught his breath; he didn't know quite when he'd lost it. Stark had reached across the table, touched the back of Steve's hand, and he felt warm, solid. He had interesting hands—not the kind you might expect to see on a genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist, unless you knew how much engineering work Stark liked to do himself. Broad, strong, littered with tiny scars.

"I knew you might have trouble being asked to act like you want to be here, but I didn't anticipate a panic attack—"

Steve didn't know what that meant. "I'm fine," he heard himself say.

"Wow, you really are a terrible liar," Stark observed mildly. "No wonder you don't pull these gigs very often." He paused for a second, and Steve managed to meet his eyes and saw that they'd narrowed a little, searching. "Have you—done this, since they thawed you out?" He gestured to the restaurant, the table, the people around them.

"No," Steve admitted.

Stark exhaled, and muttered something under his breath that didn't sound very complimentary toward SHIELD or Nick Fury. Steve wasn't sure why.

"Okay, look. Despite all appearances to the contrary, I'm not exactly an expert at this shit either. I realize you aren't as well-informed as the average citizen when it comes to my personal history, but you were around for—you know, Pepper." Stark offered Steve a wry, slanting smile, probably remembering exactly how unfriendly a conversation they'd had about that. "That was the first time in years that I even tried," Stark added. "Usually it's—it just isn't worth it. Trying to get to know somebody who thinks they already know me, it doesn't tend to go well." He paused, and looked away. He'd drawn his hand away from Steve's again while he'd been talking, and abruptly Steve felt the lack—felt like he should be reaching out to re-close the distance himself. "If it should've worked out with anybody, if there was anybody in the world who knew what they were getting into with me, it was Pepper. And it was still—"

He stopped so abruptly that Steve thought maybe he'd seen the waitress on the way back with their water. But then Steve saw the look on his face, and it was—Steve knew that look. Steve had been on the inside of that look again and again, ever since he'd woken up.

It was strange, to think the one thing he had in common with Tony Stark was loneliness.

But in a way, it was a relief, too. That maybe it wasn't Steve himself, something he'd earned or a mistake he'd made. That you could be rich, you could be smart, you could look the way Tony Stark looked; you could belong here, you could be—people could know that you were however you were, and you'd still feel alone sometimes.

Steve drew a slow breath, and did it after all: stretched his arm across the table, and touched the back of Stark's wrist. "Well, you're stuck with me until this expo of yours," he said quietly.

And Stark looked at him, flashed him half a smile and said, "Boy, are you going to be sick of me by—"

"I'm sick of you already," Steve said firmly. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Mr. Stark."

"Tony," Stark said.

Right. Of course. If Steve—which was to say Steve Roberts, obviously—was out to lunch with Stark, then he wouldn't call him by his last name.

"Tony," Steve agreed, and the way Stark smiled at him then, slow and small and warm, made his heart kick him in the ribs as if it wanted to make sure he was paying attention.

He wished dimly that he could explain to it that it was wasted effort. He already was.

Lunch went all right, after that.

It was still awkward. There were still strained silences. Acknowledging that he didn't know how to talk to people over lunch hadn't made Steve suddenly capable of talking to Stark over lunch. Stark hadn't gone on a first date in a while, and the last time he had, it had been with a woman who'd known him for decades, not a man he barely knew and didn't like.

But at least that put them on an even footing.

Stark—Tony—could be funny, when he wasn't busy being shamelessly infuriating and offensive. He seemed to be making a genuine effort not to be rude to Steve, and Steve in turn made an effort to appreciate it; to keep his temper when Tony said something that seemed off-color to him, to remind himself not to leap to the worst possible conclusions about Tony's intent.

Tony had a lot of opinions about New York, and he seemed to actually be interested in hearing Steve's in turn. By the time their sandwiches arrived, they were deep in an argument about the best way to eat a bagel. Turned out when they were arguing about something that wasn't life-or-death to either of them, it was easy to be amused instead of vicious—Stark's outrage, his fast talk, the ferocity with which he struck back, were all actually genuinely entertaining when they were feigned, when the back-and-forth revolved around something Steve wasn't taking seriously either.

Steve would've felt bad about how long they stayed at their table, even after the sandwiches were gone, except he'd caught a glimpse of the tip Tony had added on when the bill arrived.

He'd never thought of Tony as generous before. But he was starting to think there was a lot he didn't know about Tony Stark.

Tony had said it himself: _trying to get to know somebody who already thinks they know me_. Steve was probably at least as guilty of that as anybody who'd collected every tabloid picture that had ever been taken of Tony. That first fight—Steve had let the memory of it color the way he looked at Tony, the way he interpreted the things Tony said, as if the words he'd spat at Tony were the truth, the whole of who Tony was. Maybe a part of him had even wanted to believe that they were, because deciding he'd been right about Tony was easier than admitting he'd been wrong: than admitting that the scepter had gotten to him, that he'd been unkind and unfair.

And Steve owed it to Tony to do better than that. To _be_ better than that.

Finally it grew late enough in the afternoon that Steve was sure Tony ought to be at a meeting, or consulting, or doing something else that was undoubtedly more important than sitting here for another hour. He said as much, and Tony made dismissive noises but belatedly checked his not-a-phone, which started to buzz at him furiously as soon as he touched the screen.

He did have to go after all, surely. Which meant this was almost over.

Steve cleared his throat. "Tony," he made himself say, though the name still felt new and unfamiliar on his tongue. "Tony—I'm sorry."

Tony looked up, blinking. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Steve said again, and it was easier the second time, something in his throat loosened. "That first day on the helicarrier—"

Tony's face shuttered instantly.

"I shouldn't have said it," Steve went on, because it still felt important to say it, even though it was looking like Tony didn't particularly want to hear it. "I know the work you do for SHIELD is important, and I shouldn't have treated it as though it weren't."

It was true, after all. Sure, Tony wasn't a front-line fighter, and Steve had no doubt his attitude would keep getting Steve's back up on a regular basis. But his skill, his engineering ability, the tech he helped SHIELD develop, all of that was crucial to the people who _were_ out there risking their lives, whether they were Avengers or SHIELD agents more generally. That counted for something, and Steve ought to acknowledge as much.

"I'm pretty sure you've thought about that conversation at least ten times as much as it deserves," Tony said lightly, after a moment. "Consider it forgotten."

But there was still something strange and tense about his face, and Steve didn't like it one bit.

"Tony," he tried. "I was wrong—"

"Okay, no, stop," Tony said, holding a hand up palm-out. "You're not the only one who said something shitty that day, and you know it."

Steve's gut lurched. Did Tony think he'd said it just to maneuver Tony into feeling like he had to apologize, too? "I'm not talking about that. This is about me, and what I did and said. I'm not trying to make you—"

"Uh, I'm sorry, did I miss you getting up and coming over here to twist my arm?" Tony looked with ostentatious deliberateness at Steve, and then over towards himself, the floor right next to his chair where Steve very obviously wasn't standing, and then back at Steve.

It should have been frustrating, to have Tony refusing to take this seriously. But after sitting here across from him for a couple hours, listening to him, watching the way his face changed—Steve understood, suddenly, that Tony needling and stubborn was Tony comfortable, or at least more comfortable than he had been when he'd tried to wave Steve's apology off with actual politeness a minute ago.

"Listen," Tony was saying, "I get it, and I'm telling you, it's okay. I gave as good as I got, remember?" He hesitated for a second, gaze flickering away from Steve, and added more quietly, "I didn't mean that crack about—about everything that mattered about you having come out of a bottle, either. It wasn't true. The best stuff about you has nothing to do with that serum. I know that now."

Steve stared at him, face hot.

He sounded sincere. He sounded like he meant it. But how could he? He hadn't spent any more time with Steve than he had to, since that day. _Steve_ didn't know what he'd amount to without the serum—how could Tony?

"I—thank you," he managed, because that was what you said when someone was generous to you, even though it sounded thin and paltry by comparison.

"Yeah, well," Tony said, and cleared his throat. "Thank you for, you know. Doing this. Not much in it for you, given your reward for success is going to be my continued existence in your immediate vicinity."

"Tony—"

"No, I know, I know," Tony cut him off, mouth pursed in something close to amusement. "I know, you're not doing it for any kind of reward, you're doing it because it's right. You'd date a sea slug to save its life if you thought it was right." He shrugged one shoulder, as if offhand, but his eyes were dark and steady, full of weight. "That's exactly what I meant. That's not the serum. That's just you."

Steve's breath caught in his throat.

"And now I'm embarrassing you," Tony added, suddenly breezy, with a wink that made Steve's ears hot. "So that's probably more than enough concentrated me for today, am I right? How's next week for you?"

"For—fine," Steve fumbled. "It's. Fine."

And just that fast, it was over. Tony stopped Steve for a second before he could walk away from the table—in full view of the bay window, where there were still at least two cameras pointed in their general direction.

"Smile," Tony murmured, leaning in; and the leaning in was just for the sake of saying it with his voice low, Steve figured, which meant he didn't have time to do more than stand there when Tony kept going, and brushed a mustache-prickly half-kiss across the apple of Steve's cheek.

It wasn't anything. Steve had gotten more fervent kisses, and more of them, from relieved Maquis in France. But he couldn't move for a second, hot-faced, and was distantly certain the cameras outside were getting exactly the wrong—except of course right now it was the right—impression.

* * *

SHIELD Headquarters in New York City was a good forty floors at least. Not as tall as the Woolworth, which had been the measuring stick in Steve's memory; but tall enough that there was still a real nice view from the roof. Especially if you kept to the far side, away from the helipad, where nobody was going to come bother you.

He didn't kid himself that nobody knew when he went up there. There were probably ten different cameras on him. But it _felt_ like nobody knew. It felt like he could sit up there as long as he wanted—and the skyline might be different these days, but the sky, the sunlight, the river, those were all the same as they'd ever been, at least if you were up high enough.

And every now and then, when he was lucky, Iron Man stopped by.

He had warning in the movement at the edge of his vision. There weren't a lot of things in the air that were as small as Iron Man, and none of them gleamed the way Iron Man did. At first it was just the sun, dropping low, reflecting off the surface of the armor; but Steve kept watching and after a moment the light changed, Iron Man turning in the air, and he could pick out the pale fire of the repulsors separately.

He closed his eyes, and turned his face toward the river. The wind brought him the sound, rushing closer, sweeping upwards and then quieting even as it drew nearer, Iron Man settling gingerly to the roof a couple feet away from him.

"Hey," Iron Man said, filtered voice crisp and familiar. "So. How'd it go?"

Steve snorted half a laugh through his nose, let his head drop until he felt the stretch through his neck and shoulders.

Iron Man made a soft considering noise, half static. "That well, huh?"

"No, it wasn't that bad," Steve said quickly, as firmly as he could, because—it hadn't been. It hadn't been nearly as bad as he'd been expecting. Not that he'd told Iron Man he expected it to be bad, but he'd told Iron Man it was happening, in the vaguest possible terms. And he suspected that Iron Man might have noticed the steadily increasing tension in his jaw, the mounting number of grim little lines around his eyes, as today had crawled closer.

"Right." Iron Man drew the word out skeptically, head tilting. It was amazing, Steve had always thought, how expressive his smallest motions could be even though there was no way to read the look on his face. "Was the food good, at least?"

"It was fantastic, actually," Steve admitted, because that was true, too. The sandwich had been great, and Stark—Tony—had been completely right about the sweet potato fries.

"And he paid, I assume," Iron Man said, and then made a noise that Steve guessed was a thoughtful cluck of the tongue. "You know, you've actually got a pretty sweet racket going here. I take it back, I don't care if you want to complain about it—"

Steve laughed. It was impossible not to, and it made everything feel lighter, made the weight of tangled uncertainty that had been caught in Steve's chest all afternoon feel manageable.

"Really, I mean it," he said, more easily. "It was fine."

Iron Man was silent for a second, the narrow panes that formed something like eyes in the faceplate blazing steadily. "I was kidding," he offered at last. "You can tell me if it sucked. You know that, right?"

"Of course," Steve said, turning to aim half a smile up at him.

"And I know you can't stand that guy," Iron Man added, leading.

Steve looked away, and reached up to rub a hand against the back of his neck.

He hadn't actually talked about Tony with Iron Man very often. It had felt odd to do it, considering it was Iron Man's job to keep the man alive; surely he didn't want to sit through Steve's stack of complaints about how intolerable Tony was, when he was going to have to go spend the rest of his day following Tony around.

But Tony hadn't quite turned out to be the person Steve had expected him to be, and now he was abruptly curious.

"I don't know him that well," he said aloud. "I thought I did, but I was wrong. Sounds like a lot of people do that to him. I should've done better."

"Oh, god," Iron Man said, half a groan. "You really mean that, don't you? Of course you do."

"How long have you been working for him?"

Iron Man shifted one shoulder. "Mm, must be about four years now. Ever since he got back from—well, you know." His tone grew flatter, almost dry. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you're his bodyguard," Steve said. "You must spend a lot of time with him. I probably should've asked for your opinion earlier—"

"Oh, trust me, Steve," Iron Man said easily, "I can't stand him either."

Steve turned to look at him; reflex, and a useless one at that, because of course the faceplate wasn't giving away anything.

"But you've worked for him for four years?"

"I don't have to like him to save his life now and then," Iron Man said. "I assume you now know the feeling. But, hey, if you think you're not going to have too much trouble putting up with him for a while, then great."

"He's fine," Steve said, feeling suddenly stubborn. "He wasn't—he didn't try to make things difficult." He stopped, and swallowed. "Not that he had to."

"Steve—"

"It was me," Steve blurted. "I couldn't—" He stopped again, throat aching, and watched his hands curl themselves into fists against his thighs. "I didn't know what to do." He snorted, shaking his head. "Can you believe that? I'd have been better off if there had been alien soldiers falling out of the sky. At least when that happens I know what I'm _for_. I know what my job is, and I know how to get it done. But this—" He bit down on the inside of his cheek. His eyes felt hot. "I don't know how to be a civilian anymore. I don't know how to be anything but Captain America. That's all I've got. That's the only thing left that I understand."

He ground to a halt, and he almost wished he hadn't said it. It felt stupid, selfish, to have put something like that out there where someone else could see it—as if, what, he wanted to make it Iron Man's problem, too? As if it were something Iron Man ought to care about, or as if he expected Iron Man to fix it.

Iron Man hadn't spoken since Steve had run out of words, and Steve didn't particularly want to look at him. He needed to apologize. He needed to apologize, smile, tell Iron Man he'd been exaggerating and he was fine—

"Jesus, Steve," Iron Man said, soft, on an exhale fuzzy with white noise. His weight shifted, gleaming boots scraping against the surface of the roof, and then he was—he sat, knees up, the same way Steve was sitting. "Don't suppose you've mentioned any of that to, oh, I don't know, SHIELD's extremely skilled and professional psychiatric staff."

"I'm fine," Steve said.

Iron Man's silence was eloquently dubious. "You're a genuinely terrible liar, Cap," he said at last.

Steve huffed out half a laugh. "So I've been told," he murmured, because Tony had said almost exactly the same thing.

"Look, for what it's worth, I get it," Iron Man said, and then paused. "To the degree that I can get it when I wasn't frozen in a block of ice for seventy years, anyway. Outside the armor—" He shrugged again, shoulder joints cycling. "None of you have any idea who I am. You wouldn't know me if I passed you on the street."

Steve wanted, gut-deep, to protest; but he couldn't. He wanted to think that he'd know, that something inside him would recognize a fellow Avenger, the man who'd saved New York City. But that was irrational. For all he knew, he saw Iron Man every single day, just one more person in a suit and tie passing through the doors of SHIELD Headquarters.

He'd wondered about it before. He'd understood almost immediately, by the way Fury and Tony had talked about Iron Man, that it was armor, that someone was in there wearing it. And he didn't need anyone to explain to him that it was valuable to have Iron Man's civilian identity remain a secret. Guarding Tony Stark was probably risky enough, never mind the public splash he'd made as an Avenger in the Battle of New York. He'd be a target in a dozen different ways if his name and face became public knowledge.

So Steve had never asked, and he'd never pried. But he thought about it anyway. Pictured dozens of different faces, dozens of different kinds of people, who might be underneath that faceplate.

And Iron Man was right. If anything, in point of fact, it had to be harder for Iron Man than it was for Steve. At least the Avengers, high-level SHIELD agents, all knew the truth about Steve—who he was, where he was from, what had happened to him. Who knew about Iron Man? Who did he have to talk to about it? Who did he have who understood? Tony, except apparently he couldn't stand Tony, so that didn't seem likely. Fury, maybe, but that was even harder to imagine.

"Not that that's your problem," Iron Man was saying hurriedly. "I'm not saying that to guilt you. I'm just saying—" He stopped, and coughed. "I, uh. Only one version of me gets to wear this badass superhero armor and have casual chats with Captain America. The other guy doesn't seem so great in comparison." The faceplate turned toward Steve, aimed straight at him, the closest to eye contact Iron Man could get when the eye panels were flat hard white, pupilless. And then Iron Man bent an arm, clanged his metal knuckles off his chest panel. "Sometimes I don't want to take it off," he said quietly. "Sometimes I wish I could just be Iron Man all the time. So—you're not alone."

Steve couldn't have said that it was what he needed to hear, but it was. The sheer relief loosened his throat, eased the knot tied tight through the center of his chest, and he let out a slow breath and reached out, closed his hand over the smooth cool curve of Iron Man's shoulder.

"Thanks," he managed, hardly more than a whisper.

"Sure," Iron Man said, no more loudly, and didn't move away.


	2. Chapter 2

The second date was five days later.

It didn't feel like five days to Steve. His head was taken up with the knowledge that it was coming, dread simultaneous with his determination to do better, to be kinder, to remember to call Tony by his name. And it felt like he barely had a chance to take a breath, to remind himself of all the reasons he’d agreed to do this, before he had to start stuffing himself into his civilian clothes all over again.

It was an even nicer suit this time than it had been last time. Steve had been sent half a dozen messages from Tony, every single one with a small yellow winking face attached, plus an official mission prep rundown. It was both ridiculous and terrifying to imagine some highly-skilled SHIELD agent having to sit down and work up a profile on a nice restaurant downtown, just so Tony Stark could take Steve out for the evening.

Point was, he and Tony were going for dinner this time. Upping the stakes, after that lunch, which had worked out exactly the way Tony had implied it would: Natasha had sent Steve photos of a couple different tabloids, even a small item from the society pages of an actual newspaper, all of them accompanied by tight shots of Tony and Steve sitting across that table from each other, sandwiches in front of them.

What had been written beside them had been—it hadn't all been good. Natasha's message, with all the pictures attached, had said: _Things are different now, Steve. But not as different as they should be._ But it hadn't been anything like Steve had been expecting, deep in the cringing gut of himself. Speculation, a few incredibly false rumors about Steve's cover identity that had probably been planted by SHIELD; a handful of rude things about Tony and his checkered dating history. How quickly or slowly, depending on which paper you looked at, he had moved on from Miss Potts. But nothing cruel. Nothing about how they were sick, or sinners, or destined to burn—nothing about how vile it was of them to make a scene in public, somewhere children might pass by.

Steve wasn't about to test his luck by holding the search results on his tablet to the same standard. There had to be someone out there using the kind of words he was used to. But it wasn't in the real papers, and that was a bigger relief than he'd thought it would be.

The photos themselves were good. Most people probably couldn't tell, but Steve's super-soldier eyes had been able to pick out the faint flaws in each image that showed they'd been taken through glass. It was impressive what a halfway decent camera lens could do these days. Across a crowded intersection, but the details had been crisp as anything.

Steve had looked at them a little too long, at first, and then he'd caught himself, closed the pictures and tried not to look at them again. It was just strange, that was all. To look at himself-but-not-himself, out in public with a man, seen, at the same time that nobody was actually seeing Steve in particular at all. And—

And in the moment, he'd been too tense, too frustrated with himself and too on-edge, to really watch Tony's face. But the photographers had caught him with half a smile crossing his mouth, looking at Steve as though he _liked_ him. As though spending lunch with Steve were an increasingly pleasant surprise, not something Nick Fury had had to strong-arm him into.

It should've been easier to get ready, this time. In a way, it almost was. Steve had some idea what to expect, now, and he knew he could survive it. He and Tony had spent multiple hours together without the conversation devolving into a shouting match; nobody had thrown a drink in anybody's face. The worst it had been was awkward, now and then, when neither of them could think of anything to say. Overall, it had been more bearable than Steve had had any right to expect. But on the other hand—

On the other hand, that mostly just made it more frightening. He didn't—he didn't _want_ to discover he was capable of getting along with Tony Stark. This situation was already dangerous enough as it was. Being expected to—to do things like this, being allowed to go out and have everybody know he was on a date with another man, that was enough to have to get his head around in and of itself. The last thing he needed was to start actively enjoying himself while he was doing it.

He took a cab, this time. The subway didn't seem like the right way to go, in a suit this nice. SHIELD had issued him cufflinks, too, for the duration of the mission. Steve had intended to pay attention, maybe make conversation with the cabbie, to try to settle his nerves; but the glint of the cufflinks kept catching his eye, making his face hot with the reminder of who and what it was he was dressed up for, and in the end the ride was a blur.

The restaurant was nice enough to be a little intimidating—not that Tony Stark would be seen taking a date for the evening anywhere less than intimidating, Steve understood that much. Lunch might have been a low-key first outing, but dinner was inevitably a step up. And the staff had clearly been told to expect Steve, which was even worse; there was someone waiting for him, ready to guide him to the right table, when Steve was sure they must've had better things they could've been doing with their time.

Tony was there already, of course. Steve had half expected to find him digging into an appetizer, but he was just waiting—it made Steve feel put on the spot, considering he was pretty sure patience wasn't one of Tony Stark's strong suits.

"Was that really necessary?" Steve said under his breath, once the waiter who'd brought him to the table was gone again.

Tony blinked at him, as if he had no idea what Steve was talking about. "What? Oh, come on, it's fine. It's part of the job, they were happy to—place like this, it's good news when I make a reservation. Somebody's going to put it on Twitter, and in half an hour they'll be full up."

Steve drew a slow breath, and then let it out. A week ago, he'd have called that Stark being Stark, arrogant and self-important as always, thinking he was God's gift and not caring what kind of trouble people had to go to for his sake.

But they'd apologized to each other. They were trying to back up and start off on the right foot this time. And that meant not jumping at the first excuse he was given to think badly of Tony.

For all Steve knew, it was the truth. No doubt plenty of people liked to pull out all the stops to please Tony Stark. He probably hadn't even had to ask. Maybe—maybe it was even frustrating, Steve thought after a moment. If Tony ever wanted to just go out and have a quiet dinner somewhere nice, could he? Or was he inevitably swarmed by waitstaff instead, trying everything they could think of in the hope of a massive tip and some hot publicity?

It wasn't the kind of thing Steve had ever had to consider before. But it was probably a calculation Tony had to make every single day, every time he left Stark Tower.

He was still a billionaire. Steve didn't pity him, and never would. But it was something that was worth keeping in mind, he told himself, whenever Tony acted in a way he couldn't immediately make sense of—that there might be a reason for it, and a reason that wouldn't always reflect badly on Tony, at that.

Steve cleared his throat, drew out his chair and sat. "Sorry," he said.

Tony raised his eyebrows. "Two for two," he observed. "Did Fury offer you some kind of prize for fitting in at least one apology per date, or what?"

"What—no," Steve said. "I—" He gestured to Tony, how comfortable he'd made himself, lounging in his chair like he'd been there all day. "Apparently I'm late." The mission rundown had said 19:30, and by Steve's watch it was 19:29, but that didn't mean he hadn't missed something.

"No, no, you're fine," Tony assured him, with an expansive wave. "I was in the area, decided to make sure everything was ready in advance." He paused for a second, something odd and intent in his gaze. "If I take somebody out to lunch and then invite them to dinner in under a week—I must be trying pretty hard to keep their attention."

Steve swallowed, fiddling helplessly with the damn cufflinks. "I thought you didn't date much."

Tony's mouth slanted, wry. "Yeah," he said. "Exactly."

Oh.

He meant—he meant that this was going to look to everyone who cared, everyone who paid attention to how Tony Stark spent his time, as though he was—serious about this. Sweet on Steve, in a way he wasn't sweet on most anybody.

Steve swallowed hard. Luckily for him, a waiter showed up before he had to try to decide what to say.

He deferred to Tony this time around on their drink orders, stiff and too-deliberate; it was for the mission. It made sense. A nice bottle of wine with dinner in a place like this was perfectly reasonable. And Steve Roberts had agreed to this dinner. He'd agreed he wanted to see Tony again after that lunch, after that kiss on the cheek. Which meant he wanted to keep Tony's attention, too. He wanted to be wined and dined by Tony Stark, and that meant Steve had to let it happen.

Tony noticed the change, because he wasn't stupid. Steve was half-expecting to be teased, in that cool sharp way Tony usually liked to needle him; but either Tony was conscious that they both needed to at least look as if they were enjoying this, or else he was just feeling merciful. He did most of the talking, with the waiter, and made it seem as though that was natural, his own garrulousness getting the better of him, instead of Steve's inability to get a word out of his mouth that didn't sound stilted and awkward. He solicited Steve's input only once, on Steve's choice of entree, and he managed to make a recommendation and then order for Steve without seeming overbearing about it. Or maybe that was just Steve's dim gratitude talking.

Even after the waiter left, Tony kept the conversation light. The more he went on, and the less he demanded of Steve in doing it, the easier it became for Steve to breathe, and by the time he'd gently goaded Steve into an argument—a little one, engaging, about the relative merits of classic cars versus Tony's gleaming app-controlled monstrosities, not the hard cold kind they usually had—Steve was almost able to smile at him, now and then.

Their wine arrived. Steve managed to smile at the waiter, too—or maybe this was a sommelier? Steve had no idea—while it was poured, and deliberately didn't think about how much it had probably cost.

"Probably doesn't do much for you, does it?"

Steve looked up from his glass.

Tony was watching him, picking up his own glass and giving the wine a quick absent swirl before he took a sip and raised his eyebrows—a silent re-emphasis of the question.

"Oh," Steve said. "No, not really. But I still like the taste."

It was mostly true. He didn't like the taste in and of itself so much as he liked the things it made him think of. Sometimes the Howling Commandos had found a few bottles intact, tucked away in half-ruined houses; they'd split the find readily every time, and it had almost always meant a good night for them, filled with warmth and laughter, as long as they could find somewhere safe to enjoy it.

The serum had made his tastebuds sharper, more sensitive, along with everything else. He could actually tell wines apart from each other, after. Before, the rare sip or two had just been—sour, bitter, and nothing else.

"Well," Tony was saying, "you're probably going to wish you could get drunk in a minute."

Steve blinked at him.

Tony's smile had changed; it wasn't the blandly pleasant one he'd been using in the waiter's direction, and it wasn't the sharp warm one he used when Steve said something he thought was funny. It was small, and it twisted a little at the corner, and it was unfamiliar as hell on Tony's face, but Steve thought it was even apologetic.

"Listen," Tony said, leaning forward, bracing a forearm against the edge of the table. "It doesn't have to be tonight. Keep that in mind. I'm not trying to freak you out, and I'm not trying to piss you off. We've got to put up with each other for a couple more months, and I may be an unbearable jackass—" and his voice changed for a moment on the words, took on a parody of sternness that was obviously supposed to be an imitation of Steve. "—but I'm not stupid."

"All right," Steve said, a little warily.

"So, yeah, just hold all that in your head for a second while I say this; because the thing is, at some point we're going to have to kiss."

Steve went cold, and then hot, and then cold again.

Tony wasn't trying to freak him out, he reminded himself. Tony wasn't trying to piss him off. Tony was—right. Tony was right.

 _Things are different now, Steve_ , Natasha murmured gently in the back of his head.

If he'd ever thought about anything like this before, if he'd—if he'd ever let himself, it would have been with the understanding that that was impossible. That if by some chance he met a man he wanted to take out, a man who wanted to be taken out by him, if every other wildly unlikely piece fell into place for him, then they'd go out and sit like friends. They wouldn't touch, they wouldn't hold hands. And they sure as hell wouldn't kiss where anyone could see them, not unless they were someplace where that kind of thing was safe to do.

But things were different now. And if Steve Roberts was dating Tony Stark, then they were going to kiss sometimes.

"I just want that on your radar, okay," Tony was saying, somewhere that felt very far away from Steve. "And if you think you could stand it, then this wouldn't be a bad place for it."

Steve had been staring sightlessly at the table, at his wineglass. He made himself look up and meet Tony's eyes.

Tony offered him an uncertain tilt of the head, gaze steady and a little searching on Steve's face.

"It's dark," Tony said quietly, gesturing—and yeah, it was, because this place had an atmosphere to it; the tables were lit with candles, spaced pretty far apart from each other, everything dark and underlit, dim gleaming reflections in the glass panels of the wall, floor to ceiling. "Shitty lighting means shitty photos. If it's weird, if we freeze up, it'll be a lot harder to tell in here than it would be on the beach at noon."

Steve cleared his throat. "Is that where we're going next time?" he managed, and it came out only a little unsteady.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Tony said, but the line of his shoulders relaxed.

What had he thought Steve might do? Punch him? Shout at him? Steve felt half a spark of irritation, deep in his gut, at the idea that Tony thought he'd compromise this operation so stupidly—

But that wasn't fair. Tony had never been in the field with him. And even if he had, he also knew perfectly well that this wasn't the kind of thing Steve had ever trained for. Based on his past experience with Steve, why _shouldn't_ he assume Steve was going to be furious with him, and totally unable to hide it?

None of this was Tony's fault. He hadn't even wanted Steve assigned to this mission in the first place.

Steve drew a breath, and let it out. "All right," he made himself say. "Thanks for the heads-up."

"Sure," Tony said, almost gently. "Like I said, doesn't have to be tonight. And you've got the whole dinner to think about it."

Steve almost wanted to laugh. As if that helped—as if there were any chance he was going to be able to make it through the meal now, with that lurking in his head.

Except then their food arrived. It smelled fantastic, and Tony had ordered more than Steve had expected; Steve was suddenly aware that he hadn't eaten all that much today, and a moment later the clawing sensation in his gut turned into a very audible growl.

He sat there through it soberly, pressing his lips into a line, and he gave Tony a grim flat look. But underneath, he was grateful for the way Tony laughed. It snapped the tension, drowned out the echoes of Tony's voice saying _we're going to have to kiss_.

They ate. The food was great, and Steve's super-soldier metabolism meant he was hungry enough that he'd probably have enjoyed it even if it hadn't been.

The world wasn't ending. He sat there across from Tony and ate, listened to Tony's intermittent offhand commentary about the restaurant, his previous visits, how it compared—favorably—to someplace in Paris that was ten times as famous; it was fine.

He kept catching himself looking at Tony's mouth. The first four times, he jerked his eyes away, fastened his gaze firmly to his plate and waited out the heat that had bloomed in his face. But it was fine. They were just eating. It wasn't time yet.

He remembered the way Tony had brushed a kiss across his cheek, the sensation of his mustache. Steve had been kissed on the mouth once or twice by men with facial hair; Europeans did that sometimes without meaning anything in particular by it.

It wasn't going to be like that this time. It was going to mean something. It was supposed to look like it did, for one, but—but it was also actually going to, for Steve, even if Tony never realized just how much.

One way or another, after this, Steve was going to have kissed a man in public, in a context that was unmistakable. And he had every excuse in the world for everyone who actually knew him, as good a shield as vibranium had ever been; but none of the civilians in this restaurant knew he was undercover right now, and they might never find out that he had been. To them, he was going to look—he was going to look like he was—

He didn't know what to call the feeling that went through him, fizzy and uncertain and gut-clenching, at the thought of it. That there were people to whom he was never going to be anyone _but_ Steve Roberts, kissing Tony Stark in front of them one evening, no explanation offered except the obvious.

"Steve," Tony said.

Steve startled a little in his chair, though he managed to keep his fork from clattering against his plate. He met Tony's eyes, and he didn't have far to go, because—because he'd been staring at Tony's mouth again.

He flushed. But looking away now would only make it more obvious, so he didn't let himself.

"Seriously, don't psych yourself out, here." Tony was watching him cautiously, dark eyes steady. "I told you, it doesn't have to be tonight."

And however much Steve was tying himself up in knots right now, it was going to be ten times worse if he had to wait a week. "No," he said. It came out a little hoarse, a little strained, and he cleared his throat and made himself say it again, firmer, clearer: "No. It's fine. Tonight is—fine."

"Okay," Tony said, and then—still didn't do it. Steve felt a wave of frustration, more familiar and more comfortable than anything else he'd been feeling tonight, and wondered sourly whether Tony was doing it on purpose, trying to force Steve to _ask_ him for it.

But no, that wasn't fair. There was still food on Tony's plate, after all. And a moment later Steve heard footsteps: the waiter arriving, with dessert.

Tony smiled, greeted the appearance of a mound of chocolate something-or-other with enthusiasm. Steve was swept with an instant's urge to reference fondue, except—

Except the only person who was still alive who'd smile at him for it was Peggy, and that was only on a good day; a day when she might remember enough to understand what he meant.

He closed his eyes.

"Hey, Steve," Tony said. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Steve made himself say, and looked up. Tony was watching him again, brow furrowed just a little, smile wiped away entirely.

It was strange. Steve wasn't used to Tony taking anything seriously— _visibly_ seriously, not smirking his way through it with hard furious eyes.

And Steve could see him decide not to push, could trace the path of it across his face, before he cleared his throat and said, "Well. Want some?"

He'd already pushed his fork into the chocolate construction—there was some kind of cake under there, Steve was guessing. But when he lifted it out, neatly balancing a chunk on it, he didn't put it to his mouth. He held it out over the table.

Steve Rogers would never have gone for it. Steve Rogers would never have gone for it, and if he had, Stark would've made some kind of joke out of it: would've dropped it or smashed it into Steve's face, would've smiled and shrugged his shoulders and murmured, _Oops. Clumsy me._

But Steve wasn't himself. He was Steve Roberts. And Tony probably—probably—wasn't going to ruin this date on purpose.

He cleared his throat. It felt like exposure somehow, oddly overt, oddly obscene, to lean forward across the table, to part his mouth expectantly. He drew in a breath, too quick, and stayed the course. He didn't like second-guessing himself, and he didn't do it often, didn't have much practice. No reason to change that now.

Tony watched him do it, something hot and intent briefly sparking to life behind his eyes. His mouth slanted, and he reached out, slid the fork over Steve's bottom lip and pushed the chocolate thing into Steve's mouth.

It was cake after all, Steve observed dimly. Funny shape, and there was chocolate all through it somehow, hot and liquid, spilling out across his tongue in a way that suddenly seemed fraught with torrid innuendo, when Tony was looking at him like that.

His face burned, as he—swallowed, which also abruptly felt like an obscene thing to do even though it was only because there was food in his mouth.

"Jesus," Tony said under his breath, so low Steve almost didn't catch it. And then he drew the fork back and pinned on a smile. Wider than the way his mouth had tilted a moment ago, and this time without subtlety or heat. "Good stuff, huh?"

"Do it," Steve heard himself say.

Tony went still, for an instant, and then blinked at him. "Do—?"

Steve couldn't say it. He couldn't. He'd choke on it if he tried; he'd never felt so sure of anything in his life. "There's no point putting it off," he said instead, hoping distantly he sounded like someone who was coming at this strategically, someone who was just acknowledging the reality of an uncomfortable situation. "Just—"

"Ah," Tony said, and pursed his lips. He set his fork down, but that was it. "You sure?"

And somehow Steve managed to summon the patience, the steadiness, the clarity of mind, to sit there and give Tony a flat look, and then raise his eyebrows. As if he were just willing and tired of waiting.

"Okay, all right, jeez," Tony murmured, mouth quirking. "I want you to understand that you're safe in the hands of a master, here. I know in the forties people only kissed on the cheek, and everybody had separate twin beds—"

"We—what?" Steve said.

"Don't you dare try to tell me _I Love Lucy_ was a lie," Tony said, and then rose out of his seat.

There had been the weight of eyes on them, intermittent, though nobody eating in a place like this was impolite enough to really goggle at Tony Stark. But now Steve was suddenly aware it had redoubled.

"You really think there's going to be photos," he said, a little more breathlessly than he meant to.

"Are you kidding me?" Tony said. "Somebody's probably livestreaming this straight to Twitter," and then he reached out, touched Steve's jaw—curled a knuckle under Steve's chin and tilted it up, and pressed their mouths together.

For an instant, Steve was overwhelmed with it. Tony's mouth, his relentless consciousness of the fact that it was _Tony's_ mouth, the prickle of mustache and goatee in the particular shape Tony kept them that meant he couldn't possibly convince himself it was anybody else, the hot squirming feeling that filled his gut at having his face tipped up as though he were—as though he were the woman, which was such a stupid thing to think—

And then his racing brain slowed just enough, and he understood all at once that Tony was being careful with him.

Keeping the table between them; keeping his mouth closed. Touching Steve in just two places, that knuckle under his chin and his lips. Gentle, undemanding. Diffident.

Which made three things Tony Stark had probably never been before in his entire life, and abruptly some part of Steve couldn't stand the idea that he was leashing himself for this.

Half of Steve was still expecting to hear a sudden rush of shocked whispers, the finger plate of a rotary phone clicking its way around, police pushing their way through the restaurant doors. But that didn't mean he was in any mood to be—to be _coddled_ , damn it.

He gathered himself, and leaned up into the press of Tony's mouth, and kissed back.

He'd never tried to kiss anyone with more than the barest hint of tongue, and now didn't seem like the time for it, when he was already well off the edge of the map. But he wanted to be firm about it, unmistakable. He refused to do anything by halves, including this, and he wanted Tony to know it. That was what he was aiming for.

He wasn't aiming to find shy sparking heat racing to life just under the surface of his skin. He wasn't aiming to close his hand around Tony's wrist, to press his fingers into what he dimly understood was Tony's pulse positively hammering. He didn't mean to open himself up, fill his super-soldier ears with the faint soft sound of Tony's breath catching in his throat.

But that was what happened. For a second, he was swept away by it, overwhelmed.

And then he caught himself. He caught himself, clamped down—broke the kiss, because that was plenty; it had to be, because he couldn't bear any more. He'd come up just a handful of inches off his chair, meeting Tony partway and pushing back, and it wasn't hard work but his knees, his thighs, felt unsteady anyway, so he let his weight settle back down against the seat, dragged his eyes off Tony and cleared his throat.

It was fine. It worked. Tony didn't try to stop him.

But it was already too late.

His heart was pounding, as if it had caught the idea off the feeling of Tony's pulse under Steve's fingertips and thought it might as well give it a try. It wasn't a matter of physical exertion; that took a lot more work than he'd been doing tonight. His heart was pounding, and his breath was too fast, too thin, in his throat, and he wasn't just hot in the face but all over. It didn't matter that Tony probably wouldn't notice or care. _Steve_ knew why.

It was everything he'd been afraid of, everything he'd tried not to let himself imagine when he'd been sitting in that cab, staring down at his borrowed cufflinks. He'd been safe at first; it hadn't even occurred to him to worry, in point of fact. About every other aspect of the mission, sure. But not this. He'd hated Tony Stark, and that had made him safe.

But that defensive wall had cracked at lunch, had been crumbling steadily since, and now—

Tony was infuriating. Steve had to remember that. Tony was infuriating, petty and childish and egotistical; Steve didn't have to hate him, but that meant nothing. That was no reason to go stumbling too far in the opposite direction.

This wasn't supposed to happen. That was all he could think, sitting there feeling stunned and queasy, rattled to his bones. It wasn't supposed to go like this. It was only because—only because he was the way that he was, so deep down even the serum hadn't been able to fix it.

Across the table, Tony cleared his throat. "Well, hey, nice work. I knew you were good under pressure, but that was, uh." He cleared his throat again. "You're a natural."

He winced after he said it, as though he hadn't meant to; as though it sounded as pointedly insinuating to him as it did to Steve. Steve winced, too, because he couldn't stop it. And Tony saw him do it, and reached across the table toward the back of Steve's hand.

Steve wanted to pull away. Steve wanted to get up and walk out, and never sit at a table with Tony Stark again.

But that wasn't his job right now, he told himself. He was Steve Roberts, and Steve Roberts was fine with this; and he flattened his hand against the table and forced it to stay there until Tony's fingertips covered his knuckles.

That was what was important here. He hadn't made a mistake. Steve had done exactly what he was supposed to do, and Tony didn't know anything he wasn't supposed to know.

"Sorry," Tony said, quickly, quietly. "Not that you're surprised I speak before I think, I guess. But for whatever it's worth to you right now—I appreciate it." His mouth twitched, and his eyes changed, went warm. "I realize letting me mack on you isn't your ideal Wednesday night."

And there it was: exactly the confirmation he could never have asked for. Tony thought he knew what this was, that Captain America was putting up with being kissed by a man because he'd been told it was his duty.

The worst lurching in Steve's gut settled. His chest, his throat, felt strange and tight, but that was bearable by comparison. He swallowed, and then managed to shrug one shoulder stiffly. "Well, I'm going to be letting you pay for dinner, too."

Tony grinned, sudden and wide, and huffed out half a laugh. "Fair enough," he agreed. And then he sat back again, letting his hand slide off Steve's—but the weight of his gaze made up the difference, steady and thoughtful. "You know, I'm the one who suggested this place to Fury," he added after a moment.

Steve couldn't figure out what that had to do with anything. But he wanted to talk about Tony a lot more than he wanted to talk about himself right now, so he dug for something to say in response. "It's a nice place," he managed at last, which was true enough.

"Yeah, well," Tony said. "He wanted a list of anywhere I went or might already have wanted to go—didn't want to make it look like I was changing my routine. Sandwich place was on there, too. Which is why I have to ask, Cap. You got a list like that?"

"For Fury?"

Tony shrugged. "Or at all," he said.

Steve didn't know how to answer.

And Tony watched him for a beat and then seemed to realize it. "Whoa, whoa, what? You—I mean, I knew you hadn't been out and about a lot, he wouldn't have picked you if you had, but—there isn't even anywhere you _want_ to go? We've got two months to fill, here, and as long as I'm footing the bill your budget's pretty much unlimited. There's got to be something you want to see, something you never had the chance to do—"

"I don't know," Steve admitted. "I—I don't know."

He could think of a half-dozen places he used to go, landmarks he used to be familiar with. But he—he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to see them again, learn exactly how much they'd changed while he was frozen in the ice. Right now, he could imagine they hadn't; they were there in his memory, and he had nothing new to replace that memory with. He could pretend they were still there waiting for him, that he wasn't as lost in the future as he felt sometimes.

Which was an illusion, and he knew it. But knowing it wasn't the same as feeling it, wasn't the same as having to face it head-on. Steve didn't know whether he could handle that yet, and he didn't want to find out he couldn't in front of Tony Stark.

Except there was no way he could actually say any of that to Tony.

But Tony was already shaking his head, saying, "No, yeah, of course, you don't—you don't even know what's out there these days. Obviously. Can't decide what you're into when you have no idea what your options are." He paused, and made a face. "That wasn't even supposed to sound suggestive. I've just got a gift. Anyway," and he waved a hand, expansive. "The point is, that's a problem we can solve, Steve."

"Tony—"

"No, forget it, you're not talking me out of it." Tony stabbed a finger across the table at him. "We're going to get your groove back, Cap. You're going to _love_ the new millennium by the time I'm done with you. It's not all aliens falling out of the sky and dating people you think suck, okay, and you're getting the full experience if it kills me. Now help me finish this lava cake."

"Lava cake is pretty good," Steve offered unsteadily, picking up his fork.

"Great, great, one down," Tony said, and laughed.

* * *

Steve's days settled into kind of a routine, after that.

Two-thirds of the time, he was working. SHIELD still had just as many short-term combat missions they needed Captain America for; he was sent out with Natasha, Clint, and every now and then, when he wasn't busy following Tony around, Iron Man.

An hour or two every other day was reserved for the active ongoing mission—the easy part of it. The part where he got to sit down with Hill and be briefed on any new developments, objective, professional.

Iron Man came to those, too, more often than not. Steve assumed at first he'd simply been given permission, since it was obviously relevant to Tony's personal security in general; one day, though, it occurred to him that perhaps Iron Man showed up whenever—whenever Tony was already in the building. Visiting HQ for some other reason, working on a technical project or something, which meant it was safe for Iron Man to step out for an hour and come listen to Hill.

He didn't ask. He didn't do anything about it. He already saw plenty of Tony, it would be stupid to—he didn't even want to. There was hardly going to be anything particularly interesting about watching Tony work, Steve decided. Because that was what it would be. Tony wouldn't stop to talk, not when he was in the middle of something. It would be nothing but that blasting music he liked to listen to, and his face set in concentration, that little furrow he got over his brow when he was focused on something, his eyes steady and bright and intent on whatever it was he was working on; his hands, his bare strong fingers, because he didn't wear gloves nearly as often as he should—

It wasn't anything Steve needed to see, was the point.

Anyway, Iron Man knew a lot about SI, about the company itself and about its systems and employees. He was the one who managed to explain it in a way Steve could understand: that the threats were still coming, sometimes two or three a day, and all of them appeared to have been routed internally, except the origin point they traced to wasn't a company workstation that actually existed. Steve got lost again as soon as Iron Man started trying to speculate about how it could be done: it had something to do with servers, virtual machines, back doors that weren't literal back doors. The thing Steve did understand was that all of that meant someone who had access to SI's premises, or a connection to someone who did.

The same thing they'd already known, in other words: somehow, somebody close to Tony was involved in this, and SHIELD couldn't figure out who.

Iron Man didn't have any better ideas. He and Hill went over the list of possibles once a week or so, and he agreed with every reason SHIELD had for adding each name to the list, and with every reason SHIELD had to eliminate most of them from contention.

Steve was researching them on his own time, one name after another. He didn't have any reason in particular for it, except that he wanted to know about them, wanted to be able to recognize them. Including, as Tony had joked during that very first briefing, the ones who were dead—because Steve himself was proof that not everybody who seemed dead was really gone.

He asked Iron Man about them, too, whenever he had the chance. Ten Rings, the Mandarin. Obadiah Stane. Ivan Vanko. Justin Hammer, the mere mention of whom was always good for at least an hour's entertainment—Iron Man was openly disdainful of even the hypothetical possibility that Hammer had somehow succeeded in hacking his way into SI, and he was ready to rant himself hoarse about it anytime you asked.

All of that was fine. All of that was Steve's job, and he knew how to do it, and he was good at it.

And then, every three or four days, he set all that aside, and he dressed himself up in Steve Roberts's casually unremarkable civilian clothes, and he went out on a date with Tony Stark.

They did all the obvious things. Brunch, lunch, dinner; art galleries so clean and gleaming Steve felt as though he weren't allowed to breathe on anything, and movies in neighborhood theaters where Tony had grudgingly allowed himself to be talked out of buying all the rest of the seats. (The first time someone had coughed, Tony had made a face in the dimness, turned to Steve and raised his eyebrows as if to say, _See?!_ But Steve couldn't have borne putting out everybody else who wanted to watch the film, just so he and Tony could—could not even really go on a date.)

But Tony seemed determined to take Steve on some kind of whirlwind tour of the city, too. They started out at three or four days, sure, but then it slid to two or three, every other day, sometimes two in a row, as Tony decided on more and more places to go.

The Smithsonian—Steve had already been, once, but there was a lot more in there now, and most of it was new. Or at least new to him. Coney Island, which had to be way below Tony Stark's usual standards, never mind his price range; but Tony had just waved Steve off with a laugh, saying that was the point.

The Brooklyn Bridge, apparently just for the sake of walking across it together, talking. Arguing, actually, about the relative merits of getting places using your own two feet versus insisting on having shiny cars and Happy Hogan whisking you everywhere. But Steve could admit, if only to himself, that it had been—it had been nice. Technically, sure, this was still a SHIELD mission. But it was one where he didn't have to study up on his choice of tactical approach in a helicopter in midair, one where he wasn't going to be dropped into the middle of a hostage situation with forty hostiles to take down. This was spending time with someone, essentially unforced; nowhere specific they needed to be, no lives depending on what they did or didn't do.

Steve had taken the time for that. He'd—he'd thought he'd taken the time for that. Hopping on a motorcycle after the Battle of New York, leaving the city, taking each turn as it came, going nowhere in particular. He'd had almost two weeks. He'd figured that had to be enough.

But he was starting to think he'd been wrong. He was starting to think he'd been going nowhere in particular because he'd had nowhere to go. Nowhere to go, no one to see; no one who knew him at all, not in any way that mattered. He remembered the day he'd come back, the moment he'd drawn up outside SHIELD HQ and shut the bike off. The strange, numb thing he'd felt, which he'd tried to tell himself was relief, a readiness to be back and get to work.

A readiness to be back in the only place where he understood how he fit in. To get to work alongside the only people who had any idea who he was.

It had seemed fine at the time. But maybe that was because at the time, the only thing he'd had to compare it to had been the yawning pit of nausea that had eaten him up from the inside out, the moment he'd realized where he was—when he was.

And now, he had Tony.

Tony, who'd insisted on taking him to the Statue of Liberty and then gently hadn't made a single Captain America joke; who'd stood there with him, outside, while he'd stared up at it helplessly. Steve had thought for sure he'd think it was stupid, how much it meant to Steve, what a cliché Steve was for being struck by it so earnestly all over again even though he'd seen it a million times. But then—but then it had been Tony's idea to go, and Steve had no idea what that meant.

Tony, who'd taken him to some hole-in-the-wall place he never could have found on his own, for an enormous Italian dinner that had left him full, _really_ full, for just about the first time since he'd been given the serum.

They'd even gone to the Hayden Planetarium. Surely the American Museum of Natural History wasn't an ordinary date, even in the future, but Steve hadn't been about to ask. The planetarium had been just about brand new, a marvel, the last time Steve had seen it; it was different than it had been then, a new building and everything, the theater itself a huge smooth sphere, and the shows were in color now, too.

In color, and they went deeper, further out into space, than Steve had imagined was possible. Admittedly, the main one still hadn't been updated with anything about the Chitauri, though there was at least a small free-standing informational display panel. But then again it hadn't been that long. Tony had noticed, too, and he'd gotten a laugh out of it when one of the voiceovers had talked about how much they still didn't know, how big the universe was— _yeah, you've gotten up close and personal with that particular fact, huh, Cap?_

It was a puzzle for Tony, Steve figured. A puzzle, a challenge. Something to put his mind to. Figuring out where to take Steve, what to do; foods he could make Steve try. Iron Man had settled for just making the whole team try shawarma. Tony was turning it into a project, and Tony loved projects. That was all there was to it.

He wasn't subtle about it. He tended to sit Steve down afterward, in fact, to ask him about it: what had he liked? What had he enjoyed? What could he have done without? The first couple times, Steve had been embarrassed, uncertain, trying to be polite. He'd never tell anybody who'd invited him into their home that their welcome mat was ugly—in the same sort of way, it seemed wrong to tell Tony he hadn't liked food Tony had treated him to, hadn't actually enjoyed that dialogueless arthouse film Tony had bought the tickets for.

But Tony had pressed him, and he'd said it, and to Tony, it had become clear, that wasn't rudeness. That was just data.

It was one more way in which Steve was starting to get to know him. If he'd had to guess, before all this started, he'd have said Stark was thin-skinned, self-important, cared too much what people thought of him and overcompensated too hard trying to trick them into thinking he didn't. He'd have expected Stark to be coldly disdainful of him, to make snide remarks about how unappreciative he was of Stark's generosity.

But he wasn't dating Stark. After that first lunch—he was dating Tony. And if Tony was attentive, if he'd talked to Tony more than he'd talked to just about anyone in his life since the ice, if Tony listened to him and looked at him all the time and seemed eager to know what he thought, pleased to be there with him, every time they went out—

It was because it was a puzzle, for Tony. A project. Tony was always eager to work on a project.

And Steve needed to remind himself of that at every possible opportunity, because otherwise the kissing was going to get to him.

That was the other thing he'd learned he could rely on, along with Tony's enthusiastic investment: at some point during every date, they kissed.

It wasn't a big deal. Steve tried not to treat it as though it were a big deal. It kept happening over and over; surely sooner or later familiarity would breed contempt.

He'd had enough practice that he could tell when it was coming, by now. He could recognize the way Tony looked at him, the wry half-apologetic look in his eyes—the way he'd touch Steve's arm or his shoulder, the way he'd lean in close enough for his beard to prickle across Steve's cheek.

He always said something first. That he hadn't known dating was a spectator sport, that they had an audience. Sometimes there were cameras, paparazzi. Sometimes Tony actually knew them on sight and called them by name.

And then he would do it. Touch Steve's face, his jaw, or just graze his fingertips down the side of Steve's throat, and lean in closer still, and press his mouth to Steve's.

There was always plenty of warning. He wasn't rude about it, wasn't presumptuous or—lascivious, the way Steve had thought he might be. The way Steve would have thought he might be, if Steve had ever thought about how Tony Stark kissed, which he definitely hadn't.

It felt good. That was the worst part. Everything about it felt good. Steve wasn't sure anyone had ever touched him so much, before the ice or after it; he and Bucky had hugged now and then, exchanged fond punches to the shoulder, clasped hands. And with the rest of the Howling Commandos there had always been claps on the back, or sitting close together around a small dim fire, knees bumping. And of course he'd kissed Peggy, touched her, but it had all been rushed, the middle of the war—they hadn't had the time to linger on any of it.

But Tony had all the time in the world. Tony seemed to move things around his schedule on a whim, ditched all sorts of important meetings for SI to spend time with Steve. Not because he wanted to, not because Steve actually meant more to him than his company; he hadn't said that in so many words when he'd explained it to Steve, but obviously it was true. The way Tony had put it, sheepish, had been that that was what he _would_ have done if he'd been head over heels for Steve Roberts, and everybody who worked with him knew it.

Steve understood that, in his head. But somewhere deeper in the gut of him, it didn't matter why it was happening, it mattered that it was happening at all. It mattered that he was around Tony so much, that they'd talked about everything and nothing, that he _knew_ Tony now—because the dates might be fake, but they were still spending hours and hours in each other's company every week, and that was inescapably real. It mattered that he wasn't surprised by Tony's hands on him anymore, that these days he was catching himself leaning into them instead of tensing under them.

But that was a good thing. Steve Roberts was supposed to do that. Steve Roberts was supposed to be interested in Tony, supposed to be flushed and pleased when Tony kissed him—Steve Roberts was supposed to kiss back, was supposed to touch Tony in return and not care whether anyone was looking.

The first time he'd reached for Tony, Tony had jerked back, eyes wide, pale and startled. But then he'd explained: Steve hadn't even thought about it, but of course he'd read the news stories from when Tony had been taken, when he'd first invented the precursor to the Iron Man suit. Tony had something in his chest, the leftovers of an incredibly invasive procedure that had had to be done to keep his heart beating—Steve had known he'd been injured, but it was another thing entirely to watch the way Tony's throat worked, to feel the unsteady grasp of his hand. He'd guided Steve's fingertips along something smooth and cold and hard, an arcing metal plate beneath his shirt, and he hadn't breathed at all the whole time Steve had been touching it.

Steve had asked him, cautious, whether it hurt; he hadn't wanted to leave his fingers where they were if it did. But Tony had blinked, made a face, shaken his head, and just that quick the color had started to rise back into his cheeks.

Steve remembered thinking Tony hadn't seemed like his nerves were shattered. Turned out he just hadn't been looking in the right place. Turned out that was another thing he'd been wrong about.

But that seemed to be the only barrier Tony had. And once he'd let Steve through it, it was—he was warm and shameless, readily made himself comfortable in Steve's space, threw an arm around Steve or left a hand resting absently in the small of Steve's back, and Steve did the best he could to match Tony in kind. If that was what people did when they were dating these days, then Steve had to do it, too.

That was what he told himself. But it shouldn't have been so easy. Steve had always tried to be a good person, polite, considerate. He'd always tried to take the serum, Captain America, as seriously as they deserved; he'd always tried to do the right thing, and there was still a part of him that was pretty sure necking with a man in public wasn't supposed to qualify. Or at least it hadn't in the world he knew.

But there was also a part of him that was stubborn as hell, a part of him that had always hated being told to shine himself up and act the way other people thought Captain America ought to act. And that part got a pleasure that was almost vindictive out of it—out of doing what he wanted, and damn what anybody else thought about it. Sooner or later, his identity was going to be public; people were going to know he was Steve Rogers, unfrozen. And when they did, somebody was going to remember this. Somebody was going to dig up all these photos, all these gossip items, and they were going to see the truth, even if they didn't know that was what it was.

Tony didn't actually want him. He wasn't actually dating a man, and letting the whole world look at him while he did it. He wasn't Steve Roberts.

But he was getting to pretend that he was, for a while, and he was going to wring it of all it had to give him before it was over.

"So," Iron Man said. "It's going okay?"

Steve thought at first that he was talking about the fight they were in the middle of. He'd had to raise his voice to ask, over the sound of bullets clanging off his suit—because he'd put himself between Steve and automatic weapons fire. Again.

The fight was going fine. That was self-evident. Instead of answering, Steve snorted through his nose, and then said, "You really don't need to do that, you know."

Iron Man glanced over his shoulder, eyeshields blazing, bullets still pinging away.

Steve raised his eyebrows, held the shield up pointedly and waggled it a little.

"It's the thought that counts?" Iron Man suggested mildly.

And then Steve had to turn away to deal with the guy who'd been trying to sneak up on their position from his flank. He managed it in one smooth swing, grabbing the hostile's gun with his free hand to force the mouth of it away from him and then bringing the shield up to catch the man under the chin with the edge of it. Which he thought helped emphasize his point.

"See?" he said anyway, because Iron Man could be stubborn about these things. "I'm fine."

"What? Oh, no," Iron Man said. "No, I meant the, uh. Your— _other_ mission."

"Oh," Steve said.

They'd talked about it before, was his first thought. But that had always been in the context of the actual mission part, SHIELD threat assessment and the methodical elimination of suspects one at a time. They hadn't talked about—about the actual dating.

It must have been strange for Iron Man, having Steve pretend to date his boss. Steve spared a moment to be grateful Iron Man hadn't actually come along to do any bodyguarding over the past six weeks. He could just about handle strangers seeing him with Tony Stark; the thought of Iron Man, who knew him and worked with him, who was his friend, watching him lean into Tony's hand at the small of his back was—it made his gut lurch, nauseating, something not unlike shame twisting up hot in his chest.

"Look, it's only a couple more weeks," Iron Man was saying, apparently misinterpreting the look that must have been on Steve's face.

Steve cleared his throat, told himself to get a grip. A couple guys had gotten the bright idea to try charging at them; Steve hurled the shield at the same time that Iron Man turned and let loose with both hand repulsors, and when the whine died down and the shield had ricocheted its way back into Steve's hand, it was briefly dead silent.

They probably had to reload, but damned if the sudden tense quiet didn't feel like a perfect match to the discomfort closing Steve's throat.

"No, I—it's fine," Steve said.

Iron Man didn't respond, for a single eloquent beat. "You just said getting shot at was fine. I'm not sure you know what that word means." He paused, aimed a repulsor shot at the spot where somebody's shoulder was sticking out of cover, and was rewarded with a yelp. "I'm not Fury. This isn't a debriefing. You don't have to be professional, you don't need to have the Cap face on. You can tell me it sucks."

"I don't have—the Cap face," Steve said, because he didn't. He wasn't trying to. "It's not that bad."

"A ringing endorsement," Iron Man murmured. A fresh handful of shots bounced off the back of his head and shoulders, and he made an irritated sound and turned to fire the repulsors again. "Come on, can't a guy have two minutes to gossip here? Jesus."

"I mean it," Steve said. "It's not. He's—he's interesting, I like spending time with him. I like talking to him. It's not as hard as I thought it would be."

"You're serious," Iron Man said slowly.

Steve wished, not for the first time, that Iron Man could open up his helmet. That tone made him think Iron Man had raised an eyebrow in there, but he wanted, helplessly, to know whether he was right; to see how Iron Man looked at him, to watch whatever expressions did or didn't cross his face.

"He's making it easier," Steve said, understanding that it was true as he said it, that it was something he'd felt more and more sure of but had never quite put to words, even in his own head. "He's trying to, anyway, and I'm grateful."

"Right," Iron Man said. "Well, I guess that makes sense. He wouldn't want to piss you off before the expo, since you're stuck with him till then. And if he didn't know how to be charming when he needed to, he wouldn't be running a multi-billion-dollar company."

Steve frowned, hefting his shield in his hand and glancing across the open bay of the warehouse. "I could go right," he offered, and then added, "I'm not sure that's fair."

"Sure, come up on them from the side, I'll keep them busy here," Iron Man agreed. "And I don't see why it wouldn't be. Come on, Cap, you've met the guy. It's been almost two months. Are you really trying to tell me he's _less_ obnoxious now than he was when you ran into him once a week?" He tilted his head. "I guess you can't be blamed for failing to seek professional help, I don't think we had Stockholm syndrome in the forties—"

"I don't know what that is," Steve agreed, "but I don't have it. And I'll admit I still don't always understand why he is the way he is, but that's not his fault. He could probably say the same about me."

He gave Iron Man the nod, when he was done, and Iron Man nodded back and then moved away from the stack of pallets that had been giving them both partial cover—neither of them needed it, exactly, but it was nice when Steve didn't have to waste a lot of effort staying crouched so the shield would cover his legs.

Steve listened to the repulsors charging up, that distinctive familiar whine, and had to bite back a smile as Iron Man shouted, "Okay, enough screwing around already, I've got places I need to be today." Steve had always liked that about him: that bravado, that refusal to be cowed. Not that he'd expect Iron Man to be cowed by a few dozen armed extremists in a warehouse of illegal munitions, but it was the principle of the thing. Looking something dangerous in the eye and telling it that even if you were afraid of it, that wasn't going to stop you.

A long rattling wave of gunfire came next, all aimed in Iron Man's direction. Steve ducked low and took advantage of the distraction, moving around to flank the hostiles.

And then, in his earpiece, Iron Man said, "Listen, I just don't want you to get the wrong idea. You give people chances, when you think it's the right thing to do. SHIELD thaws you out, tries to mess with your head and make you think you're still in the forties, sends you sprinting out into the middle of Times Square—and you agree to work for them, because you crashed that plane on purpose and that means you think it's on you to accept the consequences."

Steve bit down on the inside of his cheek. Half of him was cold, skin prickling; the other half was distantly admiring. Iron Man knew he was trying not to get caught here, knew he had to maintain radio silence. Knew he couldn't answer or argue.

Iron Man had shut off the external speakers on the armor. He was transmitting comms only, and for a moment it was almost as though he were out of the suit, or as though Steve were somehow inside it with him: like he was talking, soft, quick, right into Steve's ear.

"But you don't owe Tony Stark anything. You're doing him a favor, and he knows it. If he hasn't made that clear, he's an asshole." Iron Man paused; Steve heard the repulsors fire, a quick doubled-up burst of sound that he recognized as Iron Man's boot repulsors kicking on too, and then a pair of sharp clunks and a cry of shocked pain. "Actually, he's an asshole anyway. Just slightly less of one. Maybe."

Steve pressed his lips into a line, and kept moving. He was about where he'd wanted to be, now, coming toward the hostiles who were still in cover at a nice oblique angle, behind and to the left. He waited a second, but none of them glanced over, none of them had heard or seen anything; and then he coiled himself up, sucked in a breath, and burst into motion.

He caught one in the back of the head with the edge of the shield, and the man went down hard. The two nearest turned with shouts of surprise and dismay—one of them rose too high, tensing, lurching up toward Steve, and a repulsor blast knocked him straight past Steve and into a skid across the concrete floor until he hit the nearest wall. Steve leapt at the other, twisted up into the air and over the kick he was aiming at the place where Steve's knees had been a moment ago, and then punched out and caught him in the jaw. He reeled back, and Steve repaid the attempt and kicked his legs out from under him, sending him down hard on his back.

Two more, three more, were coming at him now, less surprised, better prepared. He fell into the rhythm of it; he was pretty sure the serum had made his mind work faster, too, had made it so beautifully easy to see openings and mistakes, to understand where people were moving and when they were going to get there. And he still relished having the strength and the speed to get there first, as if he'd taken the serum yesterday. He was never going to let himself get complacent. He was never going to let himself forget what it had cost to make him into this.

The fight was over within about two more minutes. Pinned down, with Iron Man and his mobile and aerial capabilities on one side and Steve with the shield ready to throw on the other side, there was nowhere to go. A couple of them tried to run anyway; Iron Man whipped around in front of one and blasted him back into a couple of his friends behind him, and Steve slung the shield after the other.

In his ear, Iron Man was already radioing the SHIELD helitransport that had been waiting for them at the perimeter, giving them the all-clear to come in for pickup and extraction. Steve focused on securing everyone who was still alive, one at a time, and pulling out a handful of pressure bandages for the ones who needed help staying that way. In a fight, he did whatever he felt was necessary, but after it was over—you didn't leave men dying pointlessly on the field, even if they were the enemy. That was how it was supposed to work.

He wondered distantly whether he was ever going to stop feeling like he was in the middle of a war.

And then suddenly Iron Man was there again, one cool, heavy armored hand on his back. "Hey, the medics have it," he was saying, because they did; the warehouse was steadily filling with SHIELD personnel, spreading out to collect what were now suspects under arrest, deciding who was injured mildly or not at all and could be moved immediately and who wasn't.

"Right," Steve said.

They were both on the transport, sitting next to each other in the back next to the loading bay door, by the time Steve had figured out what he wanted to say.

And it was safe to. Everybody else on the transport was either closed up in one of the sealed holding cells that lined the forward sides of the transport, or up front actually flying it. Steve and Iron Man weren't getting debriefed until they were back at HQ. There was nobody listening, and if anyone came close enough to, Steve would hear them well before they were within human-normal earshot themselves anyway.

He hated that he was worried about it. But he was.

It was all right to start with just one grenade, he told himself. It didn't have to be a nuclear bomb every time.

"He's not an asshole," he said aloud.

Iron Man looked up. "Wow, Cap, _language_. Do I need to find you some soap and water so you can wash your mouth out—"

"He's not an asshole," Steve said again, more firmly, and Iron Man fell silent.

"No offense, Cap," he said at last, almost gently, "but I've known the guy a little longer than you have."

Steve couldn't exactly argue with that, no matter how much he wanted to. "Well, he isn't being one to me," he amended. "And I understand him better now, the way he talks. What I'm supposed to take seriously, and what I shouldn't. He isn't on his best behavior with me, he's still—he's not as funny as he thinks he is, and he isn't always kind, and he likes to make a scene for no good reason."

"Steve," Iron Man said slowly.

Steve was suddenly aware that he'd been talking increasingly quickly, increasingly loudly; that his heart was pounding, even though he wasn't exerting himself enough to make it, even though they'd been sitting here doing nothing for at least ten minutes.

"You said I was doing him a favor, and he knew it," Steve said unsteadily. "But he's doing me one, too. One more important than he could possibly understand." He swallowed hard, once, twice, and screwed his eyes shut; braced his forearms against his knees, and closed his hands up into fists so tight his knuckles started to ache dully.

It would be fine, he told himself. Iron Man worked for Tony. Iron Man had known Tony longer than Steve had. So there was no way Iron Man had a problem with—there was no way Iron Man _really_ minded if people were—

And even if it wasn't fine, Steve discovered dimly that he didn't care. He had to say it. He had to make sure Iron Man understood this. It wasn't fair, wasn't right, to keep letting Iron Man think anything else—that Tony Stark was being inappropriate, was _importuning_ Steve or something, was doing anything Steve had a problem with.

"It isn't a disease, you know," he made himself say. "Being like Mr. Stark. I told him that once, when all this started. Do you know how I know that?"

Iron Man was silent.

"Because," Steve said, "if it were, the serum would have cured it."

He still had his eyes closed. He wouldn't have been able to see whatever expression was on Iron Man's face inside the armor even if he'd had them open. But he could hear the quick rush of white noise, Iron Man's microphone on as his breath caught in his throat.

"Holy shit," Iron Man said blankly.

Steve laughed half a laugh through his nose, feeling faintly hysterical. "Language," he said, trying to sound chiding and not really succeeding.

It was the first time he'd ever said it. The first time he'd ever tried to, the first time he'd gotten anywhere near it.

He'd thought sometimes that Bucky might have suspected. But he'd never come close to trying to say the words, and Bucky had never asked outright.

Sometimes Steve wished he had. And sometimes he was glad, sickeningly terrifyingly glad, that he hadn't.

"But, uh. Not that it's not, you know, understandable," Iron Man managed. "But—Peggy Carter—"

"Yeah," Steve said.

"Okay," Iron Man said, more steadily. "So you're, um. Bi?"

Steve had to look up then, just for the sake of raising his eyebrows, mouth tugging itself into what felt like a strange, wavering slant.

"Right, no, you don't know what that means either, I don't think anybody was really calling it that until the fifties." Iron Man cleared his throat. "Look, it's a lot more complicated than this, but I'm thinking complicated isn't what you need right now, so. At the end of the day, for most people, it means both. It means you're—you like both."

"Oh," Steve said.

For most people. So there were enough people who used it, who'd heard of it, who talked about it, that there were choices. That there were arguments about it, maybe; that there were even more words than that, even more options.

It was probably still difficult. It was probably confusing, and frustrating. But it was a gift, too, Steve thought. That people felt it, cared about it, had decided it was _worth_ fighting over. It was wonderful.

He unclenched his fists, stared down at his gloved hands and then rubbed his face with them. He felt as though he'd just run fifty miles, and he didn't understand why.

"I'd never have done anything about it, if it weren't for Mr. Stark," he said, face still half-hidden. "I used to think it would go away."

Iron Man blew out a fuzzy breath. "Jesus, Steve."

"The serum wasn't just supposed to cure me," Steve elaborated. "It was supposed to fix everything that was wrong with me. It was supposed to make me stronger, faster, better. Flawless."

Iron Man snorted. "Well, obviously _that_ didn't work."

Steve tried to smile. It was true, after all. Just because Iron Man didn't really mind it, that didn't mean it wasn't an issue, a problem, to be—

"I mean, come on, you're ridiculously stubborn," Iron Man went on. "You're judgmental, you're self-righteous, you think you can do everything yourself and never ask for help. And the mouth on you, my god. You're basically a nightmare."

Steve didn't understand why he'd skipped the most obvious one, the one they'd been talking about not ten seconds ago.

And then he did understand, and he felt something tight and hot, just short of painful, wrap itself around his chest and squeeze.

He laughed, the sound strangled to almost nothing with his throat closing on him the way it was, and shook his head, reached out and found the side of Iron Man's helmet and curved his hand around the back of the collaring joint that covered the nape of Iron Man's neck.

It felt fitting: the layers of each of their uniforms between them, the gloves over Steve's hands and the metal of Iron Man's armor. Everything that held them apart, literally and figuratively; everything they had to try to reach past to get anywhere near each other.

Steve leaned in, tugged with his hand at the same time, and brought his cowled forehead to rest against the smooth metal of Iron Man's.

"Thank you," he said, and it came out softer than he'd meant for it to, cracking and uncertain.

"Anytime," Iron Man said quietly, and clasped a hand around Steve's forearm, pressing in gently with each articulated armored finger, the reassuring weight of a grip that could probably crush a man's throat.

He fell silent for a moment, without moving away.

And then he added, "Seriously, though, you can do way better than Tony Stark. You're Captain America, Steve. Don't settle."

And Steve felt too relieved, too grateful—too light, free of so much that had been weighing heavy on his heart—not to laugh for real.


	3. Chapter 3

The 14th Annual AI & Future Technologies Summit in Madripoor was circled in red ink on a calendar in Steve's head. At first it had seemed impossibly far away, no use in helping him escape Mr. Stark; now, it was startlingly close, and Steve found himself feeling almost robbed, wondering where all that time had gone.

Three weeks had relentlessly become two, which relentlessly became one. They were stepping out so often that Steve tried to tell himself that meant at least a dozen dates—but in the same way, inexorably, twelve became nine, and then five, and then two.

On the second-to-last, Tony took him to an arcade, of all things. Steve remembered mostly pinball, a couple other things; but just like everything else in the future, arcades were bigger, brighter, more colorful. Dizzying, but Steve was starting not to mind that part so much.

Tony listened to him describe how they used to be for about fifteen seconds before he blinked and said, "Wait, wait, pinball? God, please, _please_ tell me you were a tiny pinball bouncer. Did you try to beat up bigger kids if they tilted the tables? You did, didn't you—"

"It wasn't fair," Steve said firmly.

Tony didn't laugh at him the way he was expecting; he just looked at Steve and smiled, slow and then wider, warmer. "You're something else," he murmured after a moment, and Steve was already flushing, even before Tony hooked him by the nape of the neck and drew him down to kiss him.

It was brief, soft; oddly sweet, in a way Steve couldn't quite define.

And then Tony drew away suddenly, looked away from him and pulled him along by the hand, and started talking about game controls—that he had a design somewhere that he was working on, motion-controlled, responsive, intuitive to develop for. Which turned into five minutes of his extremely strong opinions on something called a Wiimote, but that was all right. Steve's heart was still pounding a little too hard; he couldn't say he minded having the excuse to sit back and watch the show.

They played half a dozen games. Steve meant to be polite and let Tony win, but the challenge of working out the rules, how to move and what to do, got the better of him—they strained and cursed and shouted at each other, as if they were kids after all.

Captain America never could've made that kind of petty fuss in public. Steve thought he'd never been quite so ridiculously glad not to be him for a while.

This place served food, too, and it was cheap and greasy and fantastically good. "Junk food", Tony called it, but it didn't taste like junk to Steve. Tony made noises about how _Steve_ wasn't the one who was going to be paying for this at the gym, but he ate almost as much as Steve did.

"So," he said, once they were finally reduced to picking at the last handful of fries. "Almost to the big finale."

Steve looked down at his tray. "Not exactly," he pointed out to it, mulish. "There's still the actual expo."

"Right, no, I guess coming as my plus-one sort of counts," Tony conceded carefully, "but, you know. You're actually going to be on the job, there. Not that you wouldn't hold off somebody who got in my face right now, but you know what I mean." He cleared his throat. "And I was thinking—you've been a good sport about all this stuff I've been dragging you to. Not that I don't want some credit for paying attention," he interrupted himself, "I developed an algorithm and everything, and I think tonight's unqualified success speaks to its effectiveness—"

"You ran an algorithm," Steve said, "that told you to take me out to an arcade."

"I developed an algorithm," Tony emphasized primly, "and wrote a utility that—it doesn't matter."

"No, it's." Steve shook his head; he was smiling, and he couldn't stop it. "That's very—you. And you did a wonderful job. This is great."

Tony blinked at him, once and then again, and Steve saw a flush working its way up his throat and into his cheeks. For a man who spent so much time talking about how smart he was, how good he was at everything, that nobody else was in the same league, Tony was awfully easy to discombobulate with an honest compliment. Steve had figured that out a couple weeks back, and he'd enjoyed getting a little of his own back: studying Tony in turn; figuring out when the best moments, the moments he could really throw Tony, had arrived.

"Well," Tony said after a moment, brisk. "Anyway, the point is, I wanted to give you the chance to pick for once. I know when we started this, you didn't really know what New York was like these days, but now that you've had the exclusive Tony Stark tour with bonus necking—if there's anywhere we went that you'd like to go to again, or anywhere you used to go that you want to see, we could. Next time." He coughed. "Not that it's—not that it needs to be special or anything, I realize that's not what's actually going on here, but—"

Steve found he didn't want to give Tony the chance to talk himself out of it. "The restaurant," he said, quick. "The Press Lounge."

"Where we—had dinner?" Tony said.

 _Where we kissed the first time_ , he mercifully didn't add.

He had to be thinking it. He had to be wondering what the hell Steve was doing, treating that as though it were a meaningful occasion. But if he wasn't going to ask, then for once Steve was willing to choose discretion over valor.

"Yes," he said, mostly steady. "I'd like to go back there. If that's all right with you."

Tony was silent for a moment. Steve met his eyes, not sure what he was going to see when he did, but it was—it didn't help; Tony was just watching him, face still, unreadable.

"Sure," he said at last. "Sure, of course. That sounds good."

"Great. Thank you," Steve added, impulsive, and he pushed himself up, leaned across the cheap plastic table and kissed salt off Tony's mouth as though he were allowed, because for a little while longer, he was.

Steve had been too mixed up in his own head the first time around to even pay attention to the restaurant's name—but he'd looked it up later, wanting to know, wanting to be able to remember it right. The Press Lounge Restaurant wasn't the same as something else called the Press Lounge, an equally expensive-looking rooftop bar; Steve had spent ten minutes staring at the pictures, trying to figure out whether they'd moved locations or something, before he'd realized his mistake.

It felt different this time. He didn't know why; or maybe he did and he just couldn't quite bring himself to think about it. He got dressed in the same borrowed suit, and wished for the first time that it was his—that even that didn't have to be fake. He put in the cufflinks, one at a time, and then he stood there in the bright antiseptic lights of the bathroom in his SHIELD quarters and looked down at them, touched them, remembering that too-long too-short cab ride, the way they'd taken up what had felt like his entire field of vision.

He left, through the basement level and up the stairs to an unremarkable side door that appeared to belong to the hotel across the intersection. He caught a cab, and this time he looked out the windows, watched the busy streets, the bright smears of city lights. He could almost pretend, for an instant here and there, that it was—1946. 1946, after the war, and he was home. Done up for a night out with a man who was going to be there just because he wanted to be; going dancing, maybe.

Steve still wanted to learn someday. Tony probably knew, but Steve never had quite worked out how to ask.

Peggy had taken mercy and asked herself for him. Thinking of her as she'd been hurt, not the way it used to gut him but as though he were pressing on a deep, deep bruise instead. He couldn't imagine taking Tony with him to go see her now, but he almost wanted to. She'd like Tony, he thought. The attitude, how smart he was, how ridiculous and difficult and stubborn. She'd see straight through him, but that would be good for him. He could stand to be seen through a little more often, and Steve sure wasn't any good at it.

The Press Lounge Restaurant looked just the same as it had the first night they'd come, candlelit and gleaming, glass everywhere so it looked almost open to the night, open to the heart of the city. There was a fellow waiting that Steve recognized, and he recognized Steve, too—nodded to him with a smile, and led him across the restaurant floor to the very same table.

Coincidence. It had to be. There was no reason for Tony to have—to have _asked_ for the same one. It must have been free, that was all.

And Tony was sitting there already, of course. He did look damn fine in a suit.

Steve walked over, and didn't sit down; he rounded the edge of the table instead, caught Tony's chin on the side of one knuckle and soaked in the touch as though he were parched for it, for the warmth and the closeness and the particular bristling prickle of Tony's beard against his skin. Tony was looking up at him, eyes dark, and he drew in a sharp breath an instant before Steve kissed him.

Usually Steve left it to Tony. Tony was the one who'd done this kind of thing before, who knew what people and cameras were looking for. Usually he just waited, and Tony let him know when it was going to happen and then did it, and Steve cooperated as best he could and tried not to let it get the better of him.

But at the arcade, and now—Steve was conscious of how few chances there were left, moments ticking gradually away. They'd be in Madripoor within thirty-six hours, and the expo was only five days long. And after talking to Iron Man, something had changed; Steve felt suddenly as though it wasn't right or fair to leave Tony shouldering all the responsibility, as though it were something Tony was doing to him, as though he were gritting his teeth and bearing it. Telling Iron Man had shaken him loose, had made it suddenly possible to act without giving himself away, or maybe just without feeling as though the world would end if he did.

"Well, hello there," Tony said, when Steve let him go. His mouth was red, flushed with the aftermath of pressure, and quirked up a little at one corner—his eyes were intent, narrowed, watching Steve like he understood something he hadn't before, or like he was beginning to. And Steve waited, breath held, heart pounding, to be told what it was.

But Tony didn't say anything. He just looked at Steve like that, a long drawn-out beat; and then he drew a quick breath, cleared his throat, and leaned back in his chair, elbow akimbo, hand loose at the wrist, as if he were sitting in his own home and not one of the most expensive restaurants in the city.

"Got to say, Cap, you seem a little more comfortable than you were the last time we were here."

And that, Steve would have taken for a jab once upon a time—but now he heard the teasing warmth in it, rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and ducked his head and felt his mouth start to tug itself into a smile.

"Well, maybe you've gotten better at putting a fella at ease, Mr. Stark," Steve said, in what was deliberately the most gosh-darn wide-eyed butter-wouldn't-melt forties voice he had in him, and was rewarded with a laugh as he backed off a stride to sink into his own seat.

"I certainly wasn't at my best that night," Tony admitted, after a moment.

Steve looked at him curiously. At his best, no—though at that point, Steve wouldn't have recognized Tony's best for what it was if it had been standing in front of him wearing one of Tony's three-piece suits. But he couldn't recall anything in particular Tony had done wrong then.

Tony caught the look and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, come on," he said. "You couldn't tell? I was about two inches from passing out. I told you the truth about lunch, lunch is easy; dinner scared the shit out of me."

"Language," Steve murmured under his breath, and Tony grinned, quick and beautiful, breathtaking, a gutpunch.

"I'd just about talked myself down, and then you come in here looking like—" Tony cut himself off, bit at his mouth for a long stretching second that made Steve much too conscious of where his own gaze was pointed and why, and then coughed. "Looking like you do in that suit," he said, instead of whatever he'd been about to say, "and it's _Captain America_ , and there's me sitting there knowing that in about fifteen minutes I have to tell you that if you want to save my life you've got to let me play a little tonsil hockey, I mean—stuff of nightmares, Steve. Stuff of nightmares."

He made an exaggerated face, tugged at his collar and stuck out his tongue like a man being strangled, and Steve laughed without meaning to at the picture he made, even though the words weren't funny; even though it was startling, strange, to imagine that Tony— _Tony_ —had been nervous.

"And I didn't exactly make it easy for you," Steve said.

"What? Psh—"

"No, I mean it," Steve insisted, and he reached across the table, touched the back of Tony's hand; could it have been this easy all along? He didn't want to think that it could have, that the only thing that had prevented it had been his own inability to bear it. "I was afraid," he said, quiet, because if anyone deserved to hear this from him, it was Tony. "I didn't know what I was doing, and I was afraid. I couldn't talk to you, and I couldn't think, but you covered me."

Putting it that way made it sound as though they'd been under fire in combat. But that was fair enough, Steve thought, and didn't try to take it back. Because that was how it had felt to him at the time—as though he'd had to take cover, as though he'd needed it. As though he'd been exposed, vulnerable. As though it would be easier, better, if he could shut himself up inside Captain America and never come out.

He was starting to understand that that wasn't true, now. That Captain America wasn't all he had to offer the future, wasn't the only part of him that got to have a place in it. But—

But this was still a mission. Steve thought about fighting alongside Iron Man, about Iron Man standing there letting bullets ping off him so they wouldn't touch Steve; what Tony had done for him wasn't any different. Or if it was, it meant more, not less, because Tony didn't have armor. And Steve was still the one with the shield: this was Tony's actual life, Tony's actual self—this was going to stick to him in a way it wasn't going to stick to Steve Roberts. In a way it wasn't going to stick to Steve Rogers, either, if Steve decided not to let it. Tony didn't have that option. Everyone knew about him, or thought they did, already.

And Tony had still covered him. Had still covered for him, had still made this his problem instead of Steve's to as great a degree as he possibly could have. Had still lain down on the wire, because cutting it wasn't always an option—that much, at least, Steve had been right about.

"If you mean I talked a lot," Tony was saying, "I don't think you should give me that much credit. I love talking. And if you mean taking the wheel with the whole kissing thing—" He raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. "Well, let's just say I can assure you that that part wasn't a hardship."

Steve felt himself flush a little. More teasing, but that was all right; he knew what he looked like, and it wasn't as though Tony had any other incentive except their cover.

He didn't have the chance to say anything in response before their waiter came along.

Tony ordered wine. The same wine as last time, and Steve heard it and looked at him, and Tony winked—winked, but then didn't look away, let the slant of his mouth slide away and left their gazes locked, and there was something in that look, something steady and serious and intent, that Steve couldn't name.

Steve ordered for himself this time. Tony made sly comments about eating meat that were clearly supposed to be embarrassing; Steve ignored him and smiled at the waiter extra apologetically, but it was hard to mind. Tony was only that particular kind of irritating when he was comfortable and enjoying himself, and Steve was almost warmed by being flirted at, even if it was obscene. This was what it was like, to be a man Tony Stark had decided to hit on. It wasn't frightening or frustrating to him anymore. If anything, he knew he had to soak it up as best he could before it was taken from him.

Because it wasn't real. No matter what it meant to him, no matter what it had done for him, it wasn't real.

He felt a sober, wistful weight settle over him. He was Steve Roberts to the world, but he was Steve Roberts to Tony, too, a little bit. Not in the way he acted or the things he liked, the way they'd talked to each other, but—Tony had given him a second look for that kiss because it wasn't the way Steve had been handling their cover up until now, and that was all. The right to be here, the right to do that, belonged to Steve Roberts, and when Steve Roberts was gone, Steve wasn't going to get to keep it.

He managed to smile at Tony, even with his heart squeezing itself up tight in his chest. Once the waiter was gone, he asked Tony about this expo, about Madripoor—Steve had never been there—and about everything Stark Industries was going to be showing off there, and watched Tony's eyes light up.

Tony was always awfully handsome. But getting him going about engineering made him beautiful: bright with enthusiasm, open, casually brilliant in a way that wasn't defensive or a weapon but simply because he knew exactly what he was talking about.

Plus, all Steve had to do was listen.

Tony was still going by the time their food arrived. Steve ate and made appreciative noises, as Tony kept talking around his own fork, and looked at Tony; watched him, drank him in, because Steve Roberts would and that meant it was allowed.

He thought about the first expo he'd ever been to—Bucky at his shoulder, Howard Stark at the microphone, a car hovering in front of him. Thinking that was the future come to life, not knowing how wrong he'd turn out to be.

But that wasn't a story Steve Roberts got to tell Tony.

"Steve?"

Steve blinked. "Sorry—"

"No, hey, it's fine, that's boring even for people who know what I'm talking about," Tony said. "Not that you're stupid, you could know what I was talking about if you wanted to, but—anyway."

"No, it's all right," Steve said. "I like listening to you."

Tony blinked. "Sure," he said, drawing the word out dubiously, eyebrows high.

Steve shook his head a little, and reached across the table again. "I mean it," he said quietly, and Tony stared at him; and then, for the first time, he turned his hand so Steve was touching his palm instead, curled his fingers against Steve's and held on.

It was only for an instant. Then he coughed, cleared his throat and drew his hand away, and lifted it to tug absently at his collar. "Well, uh. In that case, there's plenty more where that came from," he said lightly, and then poured himself more wine, even though his glass hadn't been empty.

Steve looked down at his plate. He'd almost cleared it. He didn't know when that had happened, and he was a little sorry for it now; the food here was good, and he hadn't tasted much of it.

"Listen, Steve," Tony said.

Steve met his eyes, ready for another joke, or maybe an invitation to leave and go get soft-serve from a food cart—something Tonyish, designed to lighten the mood, because all Tony had ever been doing here was trying to make sure Steve had a good time.

That counted for something. Of course it did. Steve remembered where they'd started out: _I'm not trying to piss you off. I may be an unbearable jackass, but I'm not stupid_ —a good long flying leap from _We're going to get your groove back, Cap. You're going to love the new millennium by the time I'm done with you_ , and he knew which one he liked better, that was for sure. He just wished, quiet and helpless and mulish, that there were more to it than life-saving, enlightened self-interest, and curiosity.

Except Tony wasn't smiling. Which didn't make the look on his face unkind, or even unhappy. He was watching Steve, that was all, and he was—he was hesitating, teetering on the edge of uncertainty in a way Steve had never seen him do before. In Steve's experience, Tony Stark had never met a leap he wanted to look at before he leapt it.

Then Tony shook his head, and huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh. "I should probably apologize in advance, I'm really not any good at this, but—I know this whole thing has been weird as hell for you." He gestured broadly, encompassing the restaurant, the candlelight; himself, and Steve, sitting there in his borrowed suit and those shiny little cufflinks. "And I feel like somebody should tell you not to think this is as good as it gets. I know I said all that stuff about gathering data and optimizing algorithms, but that's just a starting point. You needed a frame of reference for interacting with 2012, and now you've got one, okay, and you should use it—"

Steve thought he understood where this was going, all of a sudden. "I shouldn't settle," he said slowly.

"Yeah, exactly," Tony said, and then stopped short. "You, uh. That's—"

"Advice from a friend," Steve said. Surely Iron Man and Tony hadn't talked about it. That didn't make any sense; Iron Man had thought Steve hated the dates, until Steve had set him straight, but Tony always liked to exult whenever he managed to make a good choice, to find something Steve enjoyed. He had to know Steve liked it. And it clearly had never occurred to him to tell that to Iron Man.

They just happened to agree on this one thing, that was all. It was almost funny, really: Iron Man had as good as said he thought Tony wasn't kind enough to be considerate of Steve, and here Tony was, proving him wrong without even meaning to, without even knowing that he was.

Tony coughed. "Well," he said, looking away. "Your friend sounds smart, you should probably listen to him."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure he was completely wrong about that," Steve said mildly.

Tony's gaze jerked back to Steve, his eyebrows leaping. "Was he."

"Yes," Steve said. "And so are you. I know who I am, Tony. I know what makes me happy." Which was true, or at least it was starting to be. But there was something about saying it like this, here, now, to Tony, about—about them, about all of this, that gave the words sudden weight as they left his tongue. Heat rushed into his face, but he couldn't let that stop him. He wasn't going to let that stop him. "And you should know by now that you aren't going to have much luck trying to change my mind."

Tony snorted. "Oh, do I ever," he muttered.

He was looking away again. He was leaning back in his chair, shoulders at a careless angle, as though he couldn't be more comfortable. But he had a hand twisted up absently in the corner of his napkin, tight enough that his knuckles had gone pale.

Steve frowned. "Tony," he said.

"I'm," Tony said, and then stopped. His jaw worked. "I'm trying really hard not to fuck this up, Steve. You have no idea how hard I'm trying not to fuck this up."

It came out low, rough, and so startlingly raw that Steve's throat ached in sympathy.

"You haven't," Steve said. "You aren't. You aren't fucking this up, Tony."

He wanted to do something—reach across the table some more, or tug his chair around it so he didn't have to anymore. Touch Tony's hand or maybe his face; kiss him again, and never mind how many cameras there might be.

But there wasn't time. He understood, distant, split-second, that of all the footsteps around them, one pair were coming closer. The waiter.

He made himself breathe, and he looked away from Tony and tried to rearrange his face into something reasonable. It almost didn't work; the waiter was bringing them a familiar double serving of chocolate lava cake, as if Steve had needed the help tying himself into knots.

The waiter smiled at them both and set it down. Tony smiled back and thanked him, and if he felt the strain of waiting, sitting there unable to say anything that mattered while the waiter cleared away their plates, it didn't show on his face.

Finally, finally, the waiter hurried away again. And then it was just the two of them, staring at each other over a plate of gently steaming dessert.

Tony swallowed, once and then again. "Language," he said at last, soft and hoarse, one corner of his mouth tugging itself up; and Steve bit down on a laugh and shook his head, but he knew he was smiling, and he couldn't stop it. He didn't want to.

They ate the cake. It was just as good as Steve remembered. Better, given that this time he had the presence of mind to actually enjoy it.

Tony didn't try to feed him any. That was all right; Steve wasn't entirely sure he'd have been able to survive it.

Tony paid, and said all the right things while he signed, and Steve got a good enough glimpse to tell there was more than one zero on the amount he added for the tip.

And then it was over.

Steve had been expecting Tony to walk him out. That had happened last time, too. They'd ridden the elevator down together, and parted on the street, with another carefully public kiss.

He wasn't expecting Tony to tug him aside—not into the elevator, but around the corner from it, two steps away from a stairwell nobody used, unlit. Tony drew a breath that caught in his throat, and Steve was wide-eyed, heart pounding, as he hooked an arm around Steve's shoulders, leaned up into Steve; Steve had never been so aware that Tony was shorter than he was, had never been so conscious of the exact dimensions of the space Tony took up. He didn't even know what he thought Tony was going to do, what could possibly add up to more than all the kissing they'd already done. Except that no one was looking at them right now, and if Tony didn't care, if he—if—

"Okay, so remember that thing where I'm trying not to fuck this up," Tony said into his ear.

"Yes," Steve heard himself say.

"So if I do, it's not on purpose, here," Tony elaborated. "Because I honestly do not know if there's a good way to say this, and if there is, I'm probably not going to figure it out in the next three seconds."

Steve closed his eyes, and braced himself. "Tony."

"Stay with me tonight," Tony said, in a rush.

Steve had tried to be ready for it; it still struck him hard, knocked the breath out of him. Tony didn't mean that the way it sounded. He was about to explain exactly why he'd said it, what it was cover for and why it made sense given the mission parameters.

But for a moment, Steve couldn't figure out how to make that matter. Steve couldn't figure out how to make that count for anything, when Tony was pressed against him from chest to knee and had an arm around him; when he could hear the soft thunder of Tony's heart pounding, when he was breathing Tony's air—

"Come with me down to the car," Tony was saying, quick, quiet. "I'll take you back to the Tower with me, there's always a handful of freelancers hanging around waiting to see how hammered I look."

And there it was. Steve grasped it with something that was close to relief, because he'd been an inch away from an understanding that he felt instinctively he didn't want to come to while he was standing right in front of Tony.

"And we'll be sharing a suite in Madripoor," Steve managed. "Which we'd probably only do if we—"

He couldn't come up with a euphemism Tony wouldn't make fun of; he couldn't stand the thought of Tony making fun of him right now.

"Bang," Tony said for him, almost kindly. "Exactly." He cleared his throat, and moved back a handful of inches without taking his hand off Steve, glancing up assessingly as though he was trying to gauge whether Steve was affronted by the very idea. "Obviously you're an old-fashioned guy, that's the line I've been feeding everybody. But presumably that makes you an old-fashioned guy to whom sharing a suite would be a big deal if we weren't—" He coughed.

"Right," Steve said distantly.

"We don't have to," Tony said, because nothing sent him careening in the opposite direction as fast as Steve agreeing with him; Steve laughed through his nose without meaning to, and that made it somehow easier to breathe.

"No," he agreed, more steadily. "But it's a good night for it, isn't it? It makes sense. We came back to the place where we had our first real date. I'm old-fashioned, sentimental. I wanted something special."

It made a clearer picture the more he thought about it. He tried not to shiver; suddenly it was all too easy to imagine being the man he was pretending to be. Someone Tony Stark wanted, someone who'd decided not to make himself wait anymore—who'd decided this was real for him, who was done holding back.

He had a general idea how it worked, between men. He'd been in the army, not to mention backstage with a few dozen chorus girls, for too long not to. But this was the closest he'd ever gotten to the reality of it himself, and he was distantly sure his face had to be about the color of a tomato.

"All right," he said, as levelly as he could.

"I promise to take that as seriously as it deserves to be taken," Tony murmured to him gravely, "in about thirty seconds."

Steve choked on a laugh, let his head fall back and gave the ceiling a resigned look. "Tony—"

"I have to say it, Steve. It has to happen." Tony cleared his throat, widened his eyes, and said, a stage whisper, "Don't worry, I'll be gentle. It's not _that_ big."

There wasn't anyone close enough to hear him, except Steve. But if there had been, Steve knew, that wouldn't have stopped him.

And turnabout was fair play.

"I'm sure you're right," Steve agreed warmly, and Tony gave him an outraged look for about three seconds and then grinned so wide, delighted, that Steve could hardly look at him head-on.

"Oh, touché," he said, and then he eased away from Steve and turned toward the elevator—which was great, which was going to give Steve a breath to put himself back together, except he let his hand slide down to the small of Steve's back and left it there, guiding Steve along with him, and suddenly Steve couldn't breathe at all.

The car was waiting for them in the street.

Steve didn't know what Tony had told Happy, whether Tony had given him a time he should be ready to go or had just asked him to wait right here the whole time they'd been eating, and never mind that it wasn't a legal parking spot.

Any other night, he'd have minded. He didn't like being driven around much in any case—he liked Happy, who was clearly very comfortable telling Tony off for being thoughtless when he needed to, but everything else about the idea just didn't sit right.

This time, though, he was grateful for it. He was grateful to have the shelter of the car right there waiting for him. Tony had said there'd be cameras waiting for them at the Tower—what had been Stark Tower and was now Avengers Tower, three-quarters repaired, though the team wasn't going to be working out of it officially until the renovations were complete. And there probably would be.

But as it was, there were already at least a dozen people waiting along the sidewalk or across the street. The moment Steve and Tony came out the door, they were greeted by blinding flashes, a shouted question Steve didn't manage to turn into words with his pulse busy pounding in his ears; he wondered distantly what SHIELD had let them all find out about Steve Roberts, where he lived and what his job was, where he was from and who his family was. It overtook him for a dizzying instant: suddenly it all seemed equally unreal, the stark bright camera flashes against the darkness of late evening, Steve standing there in a suit that wasn't his in a year he never thought he'd live to see, the idea that he was about to get into this gleaming polished car with _Tony Stark_ —

Except Tony's hand on his back was warm, solid and real, guiding him forward and off the curb, and Tony was between him and the cameras. Tony said something breezy, waving a hand, and a moment later the car door was open and Steve ducked down into the welcome shelter of the interior.

Tony followed him in and swung the door shut, and just that easily the world went quiet, the shouts of paparazzi muffled, camera flashes dimmed by the tinted windows even to Steve's serum-acute eyes.

"Sorry," Tony said, low.

Steve looked at him. He was looking back, eyes dark, expression bland in a way that had to be deliberate when his face was usually so transparently mobile, ten thoughts crossing it at once.

"Yeah, I wish you hadn't hired them to stand out there," he said evenly.

"What? Of course I didn't—oh, very smooth," Tony interrupted himself, "trying to make a point, I get you. You're subtle like a brick wall, Steve," he added, in a warm fond way that made it anything but an insult. He'd relaxed a little, too, and he let out a breath and shook his head and said, "No, it's just that this wouldn't be a big deal to anyone—or, well, it would probably be still be a big deal but to a lot less people—if my personal inclinations weren't quite so well-documented." He cleared his throat, and offered Steve a wry, self-aware twist of his mouth, as though he expected Steve to start picking him apart for it, too. "I'm not exactly known for my restraint, patience, and self-control. And if I'd actually landed a guy like you, it wouldn't have taken me six weeks to seal the deal unless—"

He cut himself off. The car was moving now, light from the street flashing across his face in flickers—muted by the windows, but of course the entire inside of the car was dark, and Steve's eyes had more than adjusted; it was as though Tony were spotlighted and then thrust into shadow, every line and angle of his face there and then gone again, given to Steve with unconditional clarity and as quickly taken away.

The same thing that had been happening to him since all this had started, he thought, except at first he hadn't cared, hadn't been paying enough attention to notice, and now it was wrenching, almost unbearable.

His throat was tight. His face felt hot. He had his hands closed, pressed against his thighs, and he was much too aware of it, much too aware of the sensation of his clothes against his skin and the width of the car—much too aware of everything that was between his body and Tony's.

"Unless," he said.

It came out rough, strained. Tony clearly heard it, judging by the brief flare of his eyes, the sudden intensity of the way he was looking at Steve.

"Unless," Tony said, "it was important to me to do this right. Unless I knew it would be worth the wait."

Steve let his eyes fall shut, breath catching in his throat.

It was hypothetical. Tony didn't mean it the way it sounded. He was just explaining how this looked, how it fit into their cover, why they needed to do this—

"Which, for the record?"

And Steve had to look, then, even though he was sure already that it was dangerous; danger had never mattered to him the way it should, even before the serum, and that hadn't changed.

They were sitting across from each other, because of course Tony owned the kind of car with seats facing both ways. And Tony was—Tony had parted his thighs, which felt like an obscene thing to notice even when they were both fully-dressed. He'd parted his thighs and he'd leaned forward as if he couldn't help it, eyes steady on Steve with such weight and heat it was as though there wasn't any air in the car. His mouth was wet, as if he'd licked it while Steve's eyes had been closed, and he was wearing a perfectly-tailored suit but no tie; he had the same number of buttons undone right now that he'd had undone all evening, but with the way he was sitting forward, Steve could see more than just the hollow of his throat. The teasing lines of his collarbones, the barest ridged edge of that medical device in his chest—and it shouldn't have been hot, to be reminded of one of the worst ways Tony had ever been hurt, but the idea of being able to see the whole thing, bared, between the open sides of one of Tony's dress shirts, was—

"It absolutely would be," Tony said.

It didn't sound like a line. It sounded raw, strained and confessional, and Steve couldn't listen to Tony saying a thing like that and not _do_ something.

He moved. Tony was moving at the same time, reaching out—he caught Steve as Steve closed the space between them, one strong solid hand spread across Steve's chest as Steve lurched toward him, and for an awful, nauseating instant Steve thought Tony was trying to hold him off.

But he wasn't. He sucked in a sharp breath and that hand closed into a fist, gripping Steve's shirt and half of Steve's lapel, tugging. It was awkward, clumsy; Steve landed on a knee as the car turned, trying to brace himself with one hand against the seat over Tony's shoulder at the same time that he reached for Tony's face with the other. He couldn't—he wasn't trying to climb into Tony's lap, didn't mean anything obscene by any of it. It was just that he couldn't stand not to be kissing Tony anymore, was all.

And then he was, and it was perfect.

They'd kissed each other a lot, by now. Quickly, slowly. A brush against the cheek in passing, or a longer gentler press of lips, holding each other still, making it deliberate. Giving the paps a chance to get a good camera angle, as Tony had put it. Sometimes they hadn't been touching each other anywhere else; sometimes Tony had had a hand on Steve's shoulder, or Steve had unthinkingly put his arm around Tony's back. Sometimes Tony had made a face at him, eyebrows waggling in a way Steve had known to take as a warning, before ostentatiously slipping him far too much tongue, wet and messy and deliberately terrible, just to make Steve flush and snort and shove him off.

This wasn't like that. Tony made a sharp, hoarse sound the moment Steve's mouth touched his, and Steve leaned into him harder, swayed with the motion of the car and squeezed his eyes shut, pulse pounding in his ears. The prickling scratch of Tony's beard had been strange once, but now it just made him shudder all over, overwhelmed. Tony still had one hand wound in Steve's shirt, but he was reaching up with the other, clasping the nape of Steve's neck tight, thumb skimming the angle of Steve's jaw. Encouragement to open his mouth, or at least that was what it felt like, and when he did, Tony took full advantage: kissed him deep, plunging in, hot and slick and dizzying—

There was a noise. A noise, a sudden change in the quality of the light and the movement of the air; Steve understood belatedly that the car had stopped moving. The door, that was what it was. The near door had been opened, and Happy Hogan was standing there with his eyes turned politely skyward, and a moment after Steve broke the kiss to look, half a dozen flashes went off in his face at once.

The Tower. Right. And—if anyone ought to have a pretty good idea how long it took to get from the Tower to the Press Lounge Restaurant, Steve thought distantly, it was Tony. Tony, who knew Steve wasn't any good at going undercover, who liked to tell Steve how bad a liar he was; Tony, who'd been the one to point out that they had to do their best to convince all these cameras that they'd come here to sleep together.

"Oh—jesus," Tony said under his breath, blinking into a renewed flurry of camera flashes. He cleared his throat and moved, eeled sideways, and Steve was ready to be released, left awkwardly to his own devices, but Tony didn't let go of his shirt. "Come on," Tony murmured, "it's like sixty feet, we can sprint it," and he backed his way out of the car, drew Steve with him and didn't look away.

They didn't sprint it. Steve was dimly aware that he'd successfully risen out of the car without stumbling, that Happy was closing the door behind them, that there were at least twice as many cameras here as there had been outside the restaurant. It just didn't matter, that was all.

It didn't matter how many people were looking at them; it didn't even matter whether Tony had worked him up on purpose, trying to help him fake his way through this by making sure he wasn't faking at all. It didn't matter, because it wasn't relevant. The only thing that was, to Steve, right now, was Tony.

Tony, who was pulling Steve along with one hand, tugging at the knot in Steve's tie with the other. They were still walking, miraculously managing not to trip over each other's feet, Tony backing toward the tower and Steve following helplessly in his wake. Tony's eyes were dark and his mouth was red, a self-aware little twist to the angle of it; he was breathing hard, throat working, and he still hadn't looked away from Steve, not for a second.

"Tony," Steve said unsteadily.

"Fifteen seconds," Tony murmured, "it's fine, it's okay, we've got this—"

They did. The swarm of cameras was following them, but not closing in, not blocking their way. Tony didn't even turn toward the doors that opened into the lobby of the Tower; he just tilted his head and called out, "JARVIS?"

"Hello, sir," said a familiar disembodied voice—the same one that ran Iron Man's armor, Steve understood—and then the doors were open and they were through.

"Keep 'em out, JARVIS," Tony added.

"Standard security protocols are in place, sir," JARVIS murmured, "and your last three court orders remain in effect."

"Great," Tony said.

He was still looking at Steve, searching, gaze shifting back and forth over Steve's face. For a moment, they were—they hadn't let go of each other. They were just standing there, caught, alone in the huge echoing lobby floor, scattered camera flashes still reaching them through the glass of the doors and front wall.

And then Tony coughed in the back of his throat, and opened his hand, letting Steve's shirt slide free of it.

Steve had starched it himself, nice dress shirt like that, the way his mother had taught him to; it was crumpled horribly where Tony's fist had been clenched in it. Tony paused, grimacing almost apologetically, and smoothed it out again—and then he seemed to realize that meant pressing his hand all over Steve's chest, and he cleared his throat and drew his hand back.

"I, uh. Sorry—"

"Thank you," Steve said firmly.

Tony blinked at him, owlish, startled. "What for?"

"Everything," Steve said. "It was a nice dinner."

He didn't want it awkward. He didn't want it ruined, not by—not by his own—

Not in front of Tony, he told himself. He couldn't afford to figure out how to finish that thought in front of Tony.

The point was, he didn't want Tony to think he'd done anything wrong, or that Steve was angry with him. So he reached out, cupped Tony's face in his hand, and brushed his mouth carefully against the corner of Tony's.

"We should probably still get in the elevator together," he offered quietly.

"What? Yes, right, of course," Tony said, and stuck close—wonderful; torture—until they'd crossed the lobby, stepped into the elevators and let the doors close behind them.

The whole floor was empty. Half the building was empty, and the other half was still being repaired. Tony had been going on about it just the other day, because the amount of Chitauri tech they were extracting from the damaged parts of the building was giving him a lot to play with.

Another night, it would have unsettled Steve a little, to have the place so dark and quiet around them. But right now, it seemed only appropriate. Right now, he already felt as though there was nothing else in the world except him and Tony.

(It would wear off. Surely it had to wear off. Surely he couldn't keep feeling like this all the time—)

And then, once the elevator started moving, smooth and impossibly fast, Tony backed away.

He was staring at the elevator wall, running a hand through his hair, tonguing at his mouth absently—it was still all red, and Steve needed to not be looking at it. He wrenched his gaze away from Tony and tried to catch his breath. God. He'd never felt this way before; he was hot all over, skin prickling, the illusion that he was about to sleep with Tony Stark pressing relentlessly in on him. And yet at the same time, he knew perfectly well that it wasn't actually going to happen. It should have been a neutral understanding, a simple fact. But instead something in his chest was tying itself in a slow, cold knot.

It was wrenching, and confusing, and horrible. Of course it couldn't compare to climbing into a plane you were going to fly into the ocean; but at the same time, that almost made it worse. That was something Steve had done, something he knew he could bear—something that had saved lives, that had mattered. This was just him, him and this strange overwhelming feeling he couldn't control, and nothing he did or didn't do was going to save anyone.

He remembered thinking, that very first lunch, how he'd have preferred a life-or-death decision to picking a sandwich. It was easy to help other people, easy to see how important they were and do something about it. But he'd never understood how to do the same for himself.

"You, uh," Tony said, when they were about twenty floors up. "You can—we're hitting twenty-six in a second, there's a suite. One of the first ones they fixed up, clean sheets, and I'm sure all the loose asbestos has been filtered out by now." He paused for half a beat, and then added, "I was going to turn that into a joke and tell you we didn't actually use any asbestos in this building in the first place, but you don't even know it's bad for you, do you? Dammit."

Steve did know that, actually. He'd learned a lot of things by searching for something else entirely and then clicking all the links that came up. But Tony looked so thwarted that Steve didn't want to ruin it.

"It's fine," he said instead. "I'm sure it's great. Thank you."

"Oh, come on, it's the least I can do." Tony hesitated, and then drew in a breath. "Steve—"

The elevator stopped. Steve glanced at the controls: 26. He didn't remember Tony having touched them, but maybe he hadn't; maybe JARVIS had just overheard.

Tony said something impolite under his breath, and then offered Steve half a smile. "Seriously, you'll love it, there's a California king and everything."

_I wouldn't need it if you would just—_

It wasn't a thought Steve could finish with Tony right in front of him, not even in his head. It was too much, too close to the bone, too hot to touch. He swallowed instead, dug his teeth into the inside of his cheek, and then before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned forward to brush a kiss across Tony's cheek. Safe ground, or at least safer than the rest of tonight had been, but he couldn't—he couldn't just go without anything at all.

"Goodnight," he said, quiet, almost into Tony's ear.

And then he made himself back away, out of the elevator entirely. He got a good long look at Tony's face, dark-eyed, mouth parted, watching him do it; and then the elevator doors closed, and he was alone.

There absolutely was a suite on the twenty-sixth floor, and the bed in the bedroom was enormous.

Steve looked at it for a minute, and then away. He didn't think he could sleep if he tried, right now.

He shrugged his suit jacket off, and laid it out on the bed instead of himself. Tony had pulled the knot of his tie apart, but it was still around his neck, loose ends hanging down his chest; he took that off, too, laid it flat and smoothed it down. SHIELD had supplied a selection he could choose from. He'd picked blue, both because it was familiar, like a piece of the uniform, and because Natasha had told him once that it would look good with his eyes. She'd been idly giving him advice on how to distract strangers if he needed to, but Steve had figured it was probably applicable if he wanted to dress up well in general.

His dress shirt was still a little wrinkled where Tony's hand had been. Steve left it alone, except to roll the sleeves up. He managed not to press his palm to the spot, not to kid himself into thinking there was any warmth left from Tony there, but it was a close thing.

God. He sucked in a breath and turned around, left the bedroom—the suite had a main room, too, a balcony off it that looked out over the city, and Steve slid the glass door open and stepped out, distantly hoping the cool night air would help.

He'd been telling himself all evening that this was really Steve Roberts's problem: it was Steve Roberts Tony was pretending to want, Steve Roberts who'd been photographed kissing him, Steve Roberts who was going to have to live with the consequences—except of course he wouldn't, which let Steve off the hook entirely.

But that wasn't true. Not anymore. Not now that—not now that he wanted—

He closed his hands around the balcony rail, squeezed until the metal creaked, and screwed his eyes shut.

He had to face it. He'd never run away from anything in his life, and he didn't want to learn how.

Had it ever been Steve Roberts, really? Steve remembered sitting in his quarters, going through the identity profile; seeing how little there was in it, biographical information and nothing else. SHIELD had given him a birthdate, money, clothes. But everything else—he'd chosen his own sandwiches, even if it had taken him fifteen minutes to do it. He'd been the one at lunch with Tony, at dinner. He'd eaten chocolate lava cake off Tony's fork and let Tony take him to the planetarium, he'd walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with Tony and he'd beaten Tony hollow at pinball. He'd kissed Tony, hell, it was probably going on a hundred times at least, by now.

And he hadn't lied. He'd tried, a couple times, but he wasn't any good at it; Tony had always known.

He was Steve Rogers, and he'd been going out with Tony Stark for weeks, and tomorrow they were leaving for Madripoor. When they came back, it would be over. And Steve was going to lose this, whatever it was.

Tony and Iron Man had both told him not to settle, that he could do better if he wanted to. But—

But he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Tony was difficult, irritating, self-important. More generous in the abstract, tips and donations and the Maria Stark Foundation, than he ever was in person, which made it easy to forget that he was. Funny, and infuriating, and kind in ways that tended to be disguised as anything but.

And Steve liked kissing him, and didn't like having to stop, and if Tony had given him even the thinnest excuse to sleep with him tonight, he couldn't tell himself for certain that he wouldn't have taken it.

He grimaced at himself, tilted his head back and opened his eyes and stared up at the half-lit city sky. That was no way to act. He shouldn't need an excuse, shouldn't be looking for one. If he—if he wanted Tony, then all right. He should admit it, to himself if no one else.

He wanted Tony. He wanted Tony, and he liked Tony. He was done trying to pretend; he didn't have to anymore. Steve Roberts was supposed to feel like this. Now it was real, that was all. Just made his job easier, he thought wryly.

And if Tony noticed, if Tony asked, then Steve would tell him the truth. That was the least he deserved.

* * *

They were leaving for Madripoor on one of Tony's private jets at eight o'clock in the morning.

Steve didn't sleep. He didn't see much point in trying. He sat out on the balcony all night, back against the glass door, feet tucked under the edge of the railing, and he watched the city move beneath him, watched the color of the sky change until the sun rose.

It was maybe six-thirty when he heard a new sound in the distance. He just sat there and listened to it absently for a minute; and then, abruptly, he recognized it, and he turned his head and looked the right way just as Iron Man came soaring around the side of the Tower.

Seeing him like that, the familiar brightness of the repulsors firing and the glint of morning sunlight off the armor, was steadying—reassuring. Steve had told himself the world wasn't going to end if he did what he wanted, if he admitted he wanted it, and it hadn't; the city, the sunrise, and Iron Man all felt like proof of that in equal part.

Iron Man did a long extra couple of loops before he finally came in for a landing. Almost as if he wanted to give Steve time to wave him off, though Steve couldn't imagine why he'd think it was necessary.

He touched down with barely a hitch, cutting the boot jets and the palm repulsors at the same time, and for a moment after he did it, the world felt still and silent.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Heading out today, huh?"

Steve let his head tip back against the glass behind him. "Yeah," he said, and swallowed. "You too, right?"

"Oh—yeah," Iron Man said, and coughed.

"Good luck on your mission," Steve offered. Had to be something serious, after all, if it was going to keep him away from Stark for the whole expo—if Stark had agreed to let it keep him away for the whole expo, even after he'd learned he'd be stuck with Steve instead. And with SHIELD, serious tended to go hand-in-hand with dangerous.

"Thanks," Iron Man said. "It shouldn't be that bad. They just, uh. They need somebody armored, flight-capable, and the built-in weapons platform doesn't hurt. You know how it is." He cleared his throat, a brief flutter of white noise. "I'd be there to help you out if I could—"

"I know you would," Steve said. He wanted to smile, and did; it felt a little odd on his face, strange and fragile, but good.

He pushed himself to his feet, and reached out. Just to clap Iron Man on the back, that was all, except once he'd spread his hand over the cool solid metal of Iron Man's shoulder, he didn't want to let go again.

It was steadying. Reassuring. He was going to lose Tony, and there was nothing he could do about it; but he wasn't going to lose Iron Man. He discovered, distantly, that he felt almost calm about the whole thing now. It was pretty straightforward, after all, now that he was done being stunned and overwhelmed by it.

"It'll be all right," he said aloud. "I won't let anybody kill Tony. I'll do anything it takes to keep him safe. And I won't let him talk me out of it, either."

Iron Man went still for a moment. "That's—very you," he said at last, with a huff of breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "But you really don't need to worry about it that much. He can take care of himself."

Steve looked at him, puzzled. For one thing, he wasn't sure that was true. Tony was reasonably good at making himself look like he didn't need taking care of, but that wasn't the same thing; and he'd gotten himself out, Steve knew, in Afghanistan, but he'd done it by having a hole carved in his chest, shoving a prototype arc reactor made out of scrap into that hole, and then almost draining the damn thing entirely running what had been in retrospect the first version of Iron Man's armor. He'd saved his own life, sure. But he hadn't been particularly careful about it. He wasn't particularly careful with any part of himself: with his hands, their dozens of tiny burn scars; with his heart, the way he'd talked about not thinking dating was worth the trouble, even though he obviously hated having sex with people who didn't know him very well instead. Tony was actually pretty terrible at taking care of himself.

But it was also an awfully strange thing for Tony Stark's personal bodyguard to say.

"Right," Steve said slowly. "And he hired you just for the hell of it."

"Oh, uh—no, I didn't mean it like that," Iron Man said, a little too hastily. "I just meant that you don't need to do anything drastic, okay. 'Anything it takes', coming from you, is kind of a lot, Steve—"

"I'm going to have the shield," Steve said, thoroughly confused. "He's going to have a business suit," and he was about to say something else, about how oddly Iron Man was acting, how completely backwards that was from the attitude he ought to have toward the man whose life it was his job to protect, except—

Except the last time he'd told Iron Man he had the shield and he'd be fine, Iron Man hadn't listened to him. Iron Man had wanted to keep standing between Steve and a bunch of bullets anyway.

And this time, he wasn't going to be able to.

Steve's throat closed. His eyes stung. He didn't know why; it was a good thing. It was—he liked the Avengers, liked having a team, but they'd only fought together once, they'd only just gotten started. He'd understood that it would take time to get close to anything resembling the Howling Commandos, the way they'd worked together and looked after each other: the way they'd trusted each other with their lives not because it was an inch from the apocalypse and they had no other choice, but because they knew they could.

That was something he hadn't had since he woke up, and he'd known—he'd thought he'd known—that he wouldn't get it back for a while. But here it was, unlooked-for, unasked-for, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

He gripped Iron Man's shoulder tighter, shook his head a little and said unsteadily, "Look, I understand. You're worried about me—"

"Oh, that is—that is a wildly excessive overstatement," Iron Man said immediately, as if his armored hand weren't rising to Steve's elbow and closing around it in turn. "I'm embarrassed for you, this is so awkward." He paused. "But just because it might make you feel better, I, uh. I have something for you."

Steve blinked.

Iron Man held up his free hand.

Steve didn't know where the earpiece could possibly have come from. Had he had it in his hand all along, the whole way he'd flown here? Or were there compartments in the armor that covered Iron Man's hands? Steve wouldn't put it past Tony to have added something like that just for the hell of it, just to prove that he could.

"Right," he said aloud, reaching out to pick it up. "Because you definitely didn't have to ask Tony to put this together in advance."

"It's a single-purpose comm, it took him five minutes," Iron Man said, dismissive. "Anyway, you can call me with it anytime. Or, well, it's—I'll be out there for the long haul, but it's not going to be a hundred hours straight on mission comms, so. That's a secure line; it'll patch through if I'm free, store a message if I'm not. It'll give you the option to be rerouted to SHIELD, too, if something's gone wrong and your regular channel's jammed."

"Sounds perfect," Steve said, offering him half a smile that felt shyer on his face than he'd meant for it to be. "Thanks."

"Settle down, settle down, don't get mushy on me." But Iron Man didn't move away, didn't try to shake off Steve's hand; Steve had been holding his shoulder so long the metal had warmed under his palm.

"I mean it," Steve insisted. He'd taken the earpiece, and he put it in his pocket and then kept his hand there for a second, just running the tip of his finger over the curving shape of it. "Thank you. I don't—" He stopped and shook his head. "I don't know how I'd have done this without you. Any of this."

Iron Man was silent for a long moment. "C'mon," he murmured at last, "you're making me blush," but he didn't seem upset. He was still for a beat; and then he leaned in, and did the same thing Steve had done to him in that SHIELD transport—cupped a hand around the nape of Steve's neck, armored fingers cool and steadying, and tipped their foreheads together.

There was an instant where Steve almost took that motion the wrong way. Unthinking, reflexive, because—because he'd been kissing Tony so often, because a hand guiding his head had started to mean one specific thing to him. It was ridiculous, a mindless impulse. He obviously couldn't kiss Iron Man with the helmet's faceplate down.

Not that he wanted to. He couldn't—he didn't. He was already twisted up enough over Tony; there wasn't room for anything else. He couldn't afford to let there be room for anything else.

He closed his eyes, and swallowed hard, and made himself let go of it. All he was going to worry about right now was Tony. Everything else could wait until he was sure Tony was going to live through the expo.

"I—have to get back to headquarters and pack," he said.

It sounded inane, but there was nothing else in his head that he could put into words, and it was true.

He meant it as a rationale for moving away, letting go. But he didn't manage to actually do either before Iron Man said, "Let me give you a lift?"

It would work. They'd done it a couple times before, though Steve had usually been in the uniform. But it didn't actually matter that much. The wind wouldn't feel that cold, not to him, and it wasn't as though Iron Man would take him high enough or fast enough that he needed to worry about breathing. But Steve hesitated anyway. Tony probably wouldn't think twice about it; he never seemed to understand the difference between what made Steve feel rude and what didn't. But it didn't seem right to just go without saying anything. "JARVIS," he said, turning away a little, raising his voice.

And, sure enough, there were evidently mics and speakers on the Tower's exterior, too, because JARVIS answered him instantly. "Sir."

"Could you tell Tony I've hitched a ride? He can meet me at SHIELD, or at the airstrip—whichever's easier."

JARVIS was silent for longer than Steve had expected. Iron Man shifted his weight with a little whir of joints.

And then, at last, JARVIS said, "Certainly, sir. Consider it done."

Steve glanced at the wall. JARVIS sounded deliberately level, maybe even a little curt. But Steve hadn't talked to him that much. Maybe his synthesized tone just came out like that sometimes.

"Thank you," Steve said anyway.

He stepped back inside to grab his suit jacket, his tie, and slung them over his elbow. When he went back out, Iron Man was there waiting for him, and Steve stepped into his grasp, felt an armored arm close firmly around him, and hung on.

The trip back to SHIELD Headquarters wasn't long, but it seemed like it was. Which was fine with Steve. It was calming, steadying, somewhere deep down inside him that had been tilting helplessly off its axis. Being able to rely on Iron Man was the first thing that had made him feel as though he could survive the future after all. And the reminder, physical, undeniable, that he could was exactly what he needed to make him feel as though he could survive this, too.

The wind was loud, even flying relatively low and not particularly fast. They couldn't talk. And it probably would have been safe not to—who was going to look up, now, and realize they were seeing Iron Man, and manage to take a picture fast enough to catch Steve? Even if it happened, SHIELD could probably take care of it; make it look doctored, something. But Steve turned his face into Iron Man's shoulder anyway, tucked himself away and just held on.

That was all he needed to do. That was all anyone was asking of him. It wasn't as though Iron Man would drop him even if he did let go. It was the easiest anything had been for him since just about the moment he'd woken up, unfrozen, and he savored every second of it.

Iron Man brought him down on the helipad—more carefully than he needed to, Steve was pretty sure, and when he finally let go of the armor and stepped away, feet on the rooftop instead of on the insteps of Iron Man's boots, Iron Man was watching him, flat eyeshields glowing steadily.

"Okay?" Iron Man said, kind of cautiously.

And that was no good. He didn't need to be worrying about Steve, when he was about to head off on a dangerous mission of his own.

"Yes," Steve said firmly, and smiled at him; it was easier now than it had been earlier, which was nice. "I'm fine. Thank you for the ride. I'll—see you in five days?"

"Yeah, you will," Iron Man said—not as though it was obvious, a simple fact, but as though it was a promise. He touched the back of Steve's hand, the barest brush of cool metal fingertips, and Steve's breath caught in his throat.

And then he turned around, and stepped away, and took off.

Steve's suit jacket and tie had been wrinkled pretty badly by being closed in the bend of his elbow while they were in the air. He'd have tried to figure out where he could get an iron, but he was pretty sure he wasn't going to have time; so he took them back to his quarters and hung them up instead, smoothed them out as best he could.

It turned out SHIELD had already packed for him. He changed his clothes, showered, shaved, and did it all in a strange quiet space that was full of Tony. Tony would crack a terrible joke, or say something horribly flattering about his body, if he saw Steve undress; he'd chide Steve, transparently insincerely, for using so much water, for taking five minutes instead of three— _you're getting spoiled by luxury, Cap, better get yourself back in the Army before it's something unforgivable like **ten** minutes_.

The shaving, especially. Would he notice? Everywhere the razor went, Steve thought about Tony's fingers there, how Tony might touch him to kiss him; whether it would be while the skin was still smooth, or so late in the day he'd end up skimming prickling stubble. He looked at himself in the mirror, at the soft flush in his face, and then he closed his eyes and breathed.

It was fine. He could handle this. The things he felt were only going to make his job easier for the next five days, even if they were going to make everything that wasn't the job agonizingly difficult. And then it would be over, and he'd go back to seeing Tony Stark twice a month if he was unlucky, and it would be fine.

Once he was done, he only had to wait about fifteen more minutes to get a message from Tony—he'd come to pick Steve up after all. Steve left by the back route, came out an entirely separate building with his suitcase in his hand, and got in the car. He'd worried distantly that it might get to him, to be in a car with Tony again; but Tony was on the phone, waving him in with a smile and talking at the same time. Something rolled through Steve that should have been relief, and he got in without hesitating, thanking Happy for holding the door for him.

Tony's phone call lasted the whole way to the airstrip. He was just hanging up as they climbed aboard the jet—which was, of course, one of Tony's own designs, sleek and beautifully engineered and unbelievably ostentatious, done up in Iron Man's colors. And he was transporting all his prototypes and samples for the expo himself, unwilling to trust what he'd called "darling defenseless murderbabies—I'm just kidding, Steve, none of it is weaponry unless you pick it up and throw it at somebody's head" to any hands but his own.

Which meant Steve had about fifteen seconds to say good morning and smile at Tony before Tony'd hustled off into the rear of the plane and left Steve in a seat up by the wing alone.

It was a nice plane. It wasn't actually as bad as Steve had been expecting. He'd run across stories of poles for strip-tease dancers, but he didn't see any in here. It was almost like a ordinary room, if a very expensively furnished one, except for the way the seats were arranged, and his own awareness that he was actually on a plane.

He sat and looked out the window. Getting to Madripoor wasn't going to take them as long as it otherwise might; Steve had looked it up, and on an ordinary plane, it would have been at least eighteen hours even without stopping in the middle. But Tony was intending to cut that to twelve and get them there in time for an evening welcome banquet, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing worth doing that wasn't worth doing half again as fast as anyone else.

Twelve hours. Twelve hours, and then he was going to spend five days hanging off Tony every chance he got, trying to make sure no one killed him.

Swell.


	4. Chapter 4

At first, Steve hadn't particularly wanted to think about the expo at all. He'd understood that it was going to happen, that the danger posed to Tony—to Mr. Stark, at the time—was focused on it. And that he was supposed to be in a position to share a suite with Tony, a thought that had been tooth-grittingly offputting and vaguely nauseating by turns.

Then, as he'd spent more and more time going over the messages, eliminating suspects, trying to narrow down the possibilities, it had turned into a battlefield. SHIELD had blueprints of the hotel complex in Hightown where the expo would be held, and Steve had memorized them weeks ago; he'd always been good at visualizing terrain, using whatever intel he had to put it together for himself and holding the whole thing in his head, and this was no different. By that point, the suite he and Tony were going to be placed in was just a collection of dark blue stenciling, sightlines and angles, area that was potentially in cover and area that wasn't.

But now—

Now he was carrying a torch for Tony, and, worse still, he _knew_ that he was. He'd had enough trouble just spending time with Tony, just getting into Tony's car, without crossing a line he shouldn't. Actually living in the same space, even if it was for less than a week, was going to be excruciating.

He'd get through it somehow. He'd survive it. He'd do his best; and if Tony figured him out anyway, then he'd survive that, too. It couldn't be the first time Tony had had to deal with someone wanting him more than he wanted them, and Steve would make it easy for him, if he could.

By the time they landed in Madripoor, Steve felt almost clear-headed. This was the phase of a mission where that was about as good as it got: where you just had to focus, remember what you were there for and try to handle each tactical situation as it came at you.

They disembarked, and made it through airport security. There was a car waiting to take them to the hotel. They checked in, and picked up their presenter's packets.

And through all of it, Steve tried to keep a hand on Tony. He tried to keep a hand on Tony, and he stood too close to Tony, and he let his eyes find Tony whenever they wanted to, let himself lean into Tony, let himself stay drawn in tight by Tony's gravity.

Tony kept up pretty well. He gave Steve a startled little look, at first, but after that he matched Steve's pace just fine, casually proprietary in directing Steve around, a hand on Steve's arm or at the small of his back. He held Steve still a couple times just to lean in and whisper completely irrelevant puns in Steve's ear, which confused Steve the first time and made him roll his eyes the second time—and god, it was strange, the way so many of the things that used to irritate him about Tony only put him at ease, now.

The third time, at the base of the wide polished steps leading up into the hotel's banquet hall, Steve was expecting the same thing. But instead, Tony ran a thumb over the side of Steve's throat and murmured, "Okay?"

Before they had to go in there, he meant. Before they really got into the thick of it, before there would be eyes on them from every direction.

Before they might—might—be standing in the same room as someone who was planning to kill Tony, Steve thought, but he was pretty sure that wasn't actually at the top of the list in Tony's mind.

"Fine," Steve said, and tried to smile. By the look on Tony's face, he must have mostly succeeded; but not entirely.

"You sure?" he prodded. "We could still make a break for it. I could faint, or vomit. Tell everybody my genital warts are acting up—"

"Tony, _no_ ," Steve said, and it was supposed to be stern but he laughed, helpless, unable to stop it.

"Okay, all right, you win," Tony said, but he was grinning now, pleased with himself. Steve touched his cheek, and then slid a hand into his hair and kissed him, because it was a reasonable thing to do and because he had to, because he couldn't go another moment without it.

And then they walked up the rest of the stairs together, and went in.

The banquet went fine.

For all that Steve had wound himself up over it, it was straightforward enough. He'd had weeks of practice at pretending to be out with Tony Stark, after all, and he was grateful for it now; the banquet hall was packed full, and most of these people had actually met Tony, knew him and had talked to him before.

And had probably met his previous choices of company for the evening, for that matter.

If it had been the day after their first lunch, Steve would have been in awful trouble. He'd hardly have been able to look at Tony, and he'd have turned red every time Tony touched him, even if he managed not to throw a punch over it. Tony's jokes wouldn't have been funny to him, and he'd have been infuriated by Tony's refusal to take the whole thing seriously.

But as it was, he knew Tony was hardly ever funny when he made jokes on purpose, and he knew Tony was looking for an eyeroll or a flat look instead. He was able to relax into Tony's hands on him, Tony's arm around him or Tony's shoulder against his, Tony's foot hooking itself idly around his calf under the table. He could even mostly manage to keep paying attention to what was going on around them, listening to the hum of the crowd for anything strange or suspicious, while Tony kissed him—instead of being knocked flat by it, shocked or disoriented, the way he had been the first time.

They were seated at a table with a dozen other people. Tony knew all their names without having to ask, and Steve didn't need to; if anything was making him flush, it was the knowledge that he wasn't there to be talked to. He wasn't an inventor or a CEO, an investor or an engineer. He was there because—supposedly—Tony Stark wanted him, hadn't wanted to be here without him and had asked him along, and was going to take him to bed tonight.

The food was good. The wine was better. Steve smiled at people whenever they looked at him, and gazed around the room otherwise: harmless Steve Roberts who'd never been anywhere this fancy before, drinking it all in, and if he happened to get a good sense for the space, going through blueprints in his head and checking the lines of suit jackets for concealed weapons, well, nobody could tell.

Tony fed Steve a handful of bites off his plate, eyes dark, mouth quirked with amusement. Steve gamely returned the favor, and when Tony decided to make a lavishly obscene production out of licking Steve's fork, Steve managed not to reach up and tug at his collar until after Tony was done and had turned away again.

It was fine. No one seemed suspicious, and nobody came at Tony with a steak knife, either.

Steve had been expecting to feel worse about it. About how real it wasn't, about how little of the illusion of it belonged to him. He wasn't here because Tony wanted him to be, and in a year Tony was going to be back here with someone else—someone he was actually dating, someone Nick Fury hadn't had to argue him into taking along.

But he got to be here right now. He got to be here right now, and that wasn't nothing. Tony was safe for the moment, as best Steve could tell; he was alive, and he was relaxed and full and comfortable, enjoying himself, pressed against Steve at the shoulders and from hip to ankle. He was glancing at Steve every now and then, as if he wanted to make sure Steve was having a good evening too, and when Steve smiled at him, he smiled back, quick and bright and slanting.

It wasn't as hard to be happy as Steve had thought it might be, like that.

People started trickling out around half past midnight. Tony stayed right where he was until half their table had made their excuses and left; then he leaned in close, mouth skimming up the line of Steve's jaw, and said into Steve's ear, "Okay, let's call it a night. Not so early we look like squares, not so late we look like desperate middle-aged men trying to reclaim our lost youth." He paused a moment, moved away just far enough to look Steve over thoughtfully, and then amended, "Not so late _I_ look like a desperate middle-aged man, anyway."

Steve did a quick assessment. There was no one particularly close to him; the seats immediately next to him and Tony were already empty. Everyone else nearby them was drunk, laughing, engaged in conversations of their own. So it wasn't too risky, he decided, to turn toward Tony, with his voice pitched carefully low, and say, "I'm the one who's made it to ninety."

Tony laughed—tipped his head forward into Steve, and laughed into the side of Steve's collar. "Fair," he said, and then, "Damn, that's a lot of birthday cakes. We could throw you a party a week and we'd still owe you—ten? Eleven? JARVIS makes a mean birthday cake. I'm going to get on that."

Steve huffed a breath through his nose. "Tony—"

"No, seriously," Tony said. "You've been cheated of cake. It's not right. You should get to have cake." He bit at his mouth; and then suddenly he leaned in close again, so close his cheek was pressed to Steve's this time, and he whispered like it was a secret, like it was something he was afraid to say, "You should get to have anything you want."

God. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, and made himself breathe.

It was fine. It was just Tony being Tony, extravagantly generous but always sidelong about it. He meant it, but only because he didn't know what Steve actually wanted.

"Sweet-talker," Steve made himself say, unsteady. And then he stood, kept an arm around Tony so he brought Tony with him, and a moment later Tony swayed away a little.

"Wow, guess I've had enough." For their audience, Steve understood immediately; what was left of their table nodded and smiled, clearly familiar with Tony's worst excesses, and just that quickly, they were free.

The suite set aside for Tony Stark and Guest was huge. It had a generous entryway, a sitting room, a lounge, a kitchenette; enormous closets, a balcony, and two bathrooms.

But there was only one bedroom.

The bed was big—even bigger than the one Tony had tried to let him borrow at the Tower. It was nothing to worry about. Steve had shared less space with more men dozens of times, during the war.

Their luggage had been brought up already. Steve made that the only thing in his head: picking a closet, opening up his suitcase and discovering what SHIELD had put in it, hanging everything up as neatly and attentively as he could. He could hear Tony moving around, behind him and then in another room; he tried not to dwell on it, tried not to let himself imagine exactly how Tony was standing or what he was doing. Tracking Tony's location was fine, reasonable in the face of an unknown chance of sudden homicidal assault. The rest was too much. The rest was going to add up to more than he could carry, if he let it.

So he didn't. He shook out shirts, smoothed down cuffs, folded slacks. He concentrated on simple things, the movements of his hands, the lengths of his breaths, and he didn't let the running tide swelling up inside him drag him down.

But at last there was nothing left for him to distract himself with. He went out into the main room, and Tony had already rearranged half the furniture so he could raise what had been a coffee table to desk height, small complicated pieces of something spread out across it and pliers in his hand.

It wasn't the kind of thing Steve should have felt a pulse of fond warmth over. But he did anyway.

"Tony?"

"What?" Tony twisted halfway around, blinking over his shoulder, without moving his hands or setting anything down. "Oh—do whatever you want," he said, before Steve could even figure out how to ask. "I'm going to be up for a little while here, I want to figure out why this circuit is generating so much heat. Solving stupid problems helps me sleep." He shrugged a little, and then abruptly winked. "Don't wait up, dollface."

Steve gave him a flat, steady look, ignoring the sensation of heat creeping up into his ears, and then Tony laughed, turning back around, and there was nothing to keep him there.

If he'd felt self-conscious about thinking of Tony as he dressed and showered this morning, it was nothing compared to doing it while Tony was only one room away. It was for the best that when he was done, he could slide into an empty bed.

He lay there, awake, for a while. But the steady stream of sounds Tony made while he was working—tiny creaky metallic noises, cursing under his breath, the squeak and clank of the pliers as he pried things apart—showed no signs of slowing down or quieting. Steve thought hazily that he ought to get up, go out there and tell Tony he could come work in the bedroom, so Steve would be closer if anything were to happen; and then, before he could actually do it, he was asleep.

* * *

Steve woke at six—a reckless forty-five minutes later than usual. For a moment, he didn't quite know where he was.

And then he did, and he rolled over.

The other side of the bed was empty.

Steve lay there and looked at the perfect plump pillow, the smooth uncreased sheets. Something in his chest contracted, and he tried to make it stop and didn't succeed. It was ridiculous to be anything but grateful. He didn't know what the hell he would have done if he'd woken up wrapped around Tony, how he would have explained himself with anything less than a truth Tony probably didn't want to hear.

He got up.

SHIELD had thoughtfully packed him something he could run in. It was going to be about the coolest it got in Madripoor, for the next hour. He'd find Tony first, he thought, and yell at him for doing whatever it was he was doing without Steve when his life was in danger. Tony probably wouldn't want to come for a run after that, but that was all right, Steve was willing to argue the point for as long as he had to—

He stopped short in the doorway between the bedroom and the main room, and every single thought left his head at once.

Tony hadn't gone anywhere. Steve should have tried to listen for him; he was snoring, just a little. Bent over the coffee table, which was still raised off the floor thanks to a chair under the legs at either end, and he was slumped in a way that was probably going to leave his back screaming at him for the rest of the day, face pressed slackly to the ceramic surface.

He looked ridiculous. He looked perfect.

Steve stood there helplessly, struck, for he didn't know how long.

And then he caught himself, and got Tony to move.

It took a minute. Tony didn't wake up all the way, didn't even really open his eyes; but he made wordlike sounds and let Steve shift him over until he was lying down on the enormous couch instead of crumpled over a table.

Steve settled him there, ran a soothing hand through his hair a couple times—and then he realized what he was doing and made himself get up.

The shift of his weight coming off the couch made Tony make a vague interrogative noise, as if he knew Steve was there; as if he felt Steve's absence.

Steve wanted to run at least twice as far as usual. But he couldn't leave Tony alone, and he couldn't find it in himself to wake him, either.

He went out on the balcony instead. Madripoor wasn't New York, and Hightown's unfamiliarly luxurious grace, sunlit and sparkling, only made Steve think about how much got taken from Lowtown to make it happen. But at least this way he had something to look at that wasn't Tony's sleeping face.

The day didn't get any easier for Steve after that.

Tony woke up disoriented, demanding coffee, insistent that Steve had actually let him sleep too long—that his body and his brain, in combination, formed a finely-tuned biological machine that required a strictly-observed balance between sleep deprivation and caffeine to function at its best. He had to say it twice, because his voice was gravelly and sleep-rough, and his mouth looked soft, and all in all Steve hadn't heard a single damn word the first time around.

They'd intended to be out and about by ten, in part because they were coordinating their schedule with a SHIELD team already set up in the city, who could communicate with Steve in an emergency through a tiny comm that fit so low in his ear you could hardly even tell it was there. The other part was because Tony wanted to scope out the competition; not, he amended immediately, that there was any, with this crowd. Then he took a shower that lasted until eight after ten, which was both irritating, because Steve didn't particularly like being late, and almost unbearable, because Steve could— _hear_ him.

(It wasn't even that he was doing anything particularly private, besides showering in the first place. He didn't need to be. It was—the sound of it, the water, knowing what it was pouring onto and splashing off of; Steve could even pick out the slick sound of wet hands over skin, the shuffle and splatter of his feet as he turned around one way and then the other, the deep almost-voiced sigh low in his throat as he tipped his head back and turned his face up into—)

It didn't get better once they were out of the suite, either. Because that meant he wasn't able to maintain a safe distance, to just stay carefully out of Tony's space. He had to take Tony's hand, or hook a finger in the cuff of Tony's sleeve, or keep an arm around Tony's shoulders. He _wanted_ to, and he had to, and that was a gift at the same time that it was excruciating, because he was aware at every moment that it hadn't actually been given to him—that Tony had no idea, and that if he had it probably wouldn't make a difference, except in the sense that the whole mission would be more difficult for both of them.

It was a relentless, endless strain, going three directions at once that way for hours at a time. But he couldn't stop, couldn't give in. It didn't matter how hard it was. Tony's life was on the line, and that was more important to him than the rest of it. That had been true even back when he'd actively disliked Tony, and it wasn't _less_ true, now that he—now.

So he stuck to Tony like a burr through the whole expo hall, and he kept what he hoped was a vaguely pleasant look on his face. He filed away names, faces, anyone who seemed a little too interested in where Tony was going to be later or where the Stark Industries displays had been set up. His cover made it easier, the same way it had at the banquet: nobody was here to talk to him. A handful of people made nice, but Steve had never been particularly good at small talk, and most of them gave up after a minute. No one was paying attention to him in and of himself, as far as he could tell.

Which presumably meant his cover was intact, and whoever was after Tony, they hadn't figured out Steve was Captain America. Fury would be happy to hear that, at least.

The hours ticked by with agonizing slowness. Lunch was more of the same; after that, Tony wanted to stop by the Stark Industries installation to see how what he called his "minions" were doing. "And then," he said, "let's blow this popsicle stand."

"Tony—"

"No, I know, we're not supposed to leave the hotel unless it's an emergency," Tony said, making a puppet mouth with his hand that opened and closed in time with the words. "But I'll let you in on a little secret, Steve: I do not now, nor have I ever, had the patience for this shit."

Steve looked at him. He was raising an eyebrow, a familiarly scornful expression on his face; but there was faint strain around his eyes, his mouth, more noticeable the more carefully Steve searched for it.

"I'm terrible at schmoozing," Tony went on. "Ask anybody, seriously. Most of the time I just nod and smile at about ten people and then go get drunk and find a reporter to hit on. Even when I'm on my best behavior, I lose the will to live and tap out after an hour or two. I know you've been—" He waved a hand vaguely. "Scoping out the crowd or whatever. But you haven't noticed anything, right?"

"Right," Steve conceded.

"So! You, me, room service." Tony leaned in, and added in a half-whisper, as though it were the most seductive lure of all, "An enclosed space with a limited number of points of entry." He waggled his eyebrows. "Come on, you know you want to."

Steve had to admit that he did.

It didn't make the afternoon better, just a different kind of difficult. Steve had thought he already spent a lot of time around Tony, but this was closing in on thirty-six hours straight if you counted the plane ride. And it wasn't the same, it couldn't be, to see Tony when he was prepared to be seen, even if it was just at the neighborhood arcade, and then to see him when he just—was. Tugging his tie loose with a sigh and leaving it to dangle over his chest, shrugging off his suit jacket and tossing it away without even looking to see where it was going to land, absently rolling up his crisp shirtsleeves one at a time: making himself comfortable.

As if Steve hadn't already been in enough trouble.

Steve forced himself to spend some time updating the SHIELD team, listening to their reports in return from each of seven different concealed tactical positions surrounding the hotel. He got patched through directly to Fury, who gave him a handful of additional names that SHIELD had managed to cross off their suspect list and then wanted to be walked through the operation's progression, and never mind that he was about to get the digest version from the SHIELD agents any minute.

By the time he was done with it all, the sun had started to set, the sky a dozen different colors and all of them reflected in the sea in blurry, brilliant strokes. Tony had in fact ordered room service; Steve hadn't been thinking of himself as particularly hungry, but the moment he breathed in the smell of hot food, he was starving.

Tony grinned as though he could tell, and maybe he could—Steve's eyes felt as big as his stomach, for a second there. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he said. "C'mon, Cap, quit working hard and try a little hardly working on for size, huh?"

Steve gave him a flat look, but didn't try to beg off. He'd done everything he was supposed to do, and it had steadied him out, helped him get his head right. And the food really did smell good.

Tony had gone overboard, as he so often did, and seemed to have ordered one of everything, from some kind of veal tenderloin and caviar to grilled cheese with bacon. Steve tried it all one plate at a time, while Tony listed off every single piece of technology that had been on display at the expo and then described how he would have made it work better.

It wasn't—Steve didn't mean to make anything of it. It had been such a long day, and he might not be used to spending thirty-six hours with Tony, but he _was_ used to eating with Tony.

He was sitting on the couch, with a side table Tony had borrowed from the lounge to eat off of because the coffee table was still serving as a work surface. Tony had been across the room from him, on an overstuffed leather chair; but he came and sat down next to Steve, to sketch a revised design for a scanner in the air in front of them from the right perspective, and then he didn't get up again.

He kept talking. Steve started to slow down, feeling the weight of satisfying fullness beginning to settle in on him. He relaxed backward into the couch, still chewing. His thigh touched Tony's knee. It was so unremarkable compared to everything else they'd done, so low on the scale that measured the ways he and Tony had touched each other, that he barely even noticed it.

Tony was warm, solid. It was a comfort, undeniably, now that what had been an abstract and vague danger to Tony had started feeling closer at hand, to have Tony next to him, within arm's reach, safe and alive. Steve pressed their shoulders together, solely for the reassurance of it.

"Well," Tony said, when the food was gone and he'd run out of petty digs to make. "Want to put something on and not watch it?" He waggled an eyebrow.

Steve gave him a sour look, but he could feel his mouth trying to tug itself up at the corners. "Shameless," he diagnosed, as if he were disappointed but not surprised.

"You know it," Tony said warmly, and he leaned into Steve's shoulder, reached over with his far hand and tipped Steve's face toward him, and then they were kissing.

They'd done it so many times, and Steve liked it so much; he didn't think about it, he just let it happen. It didn't seem strange.

And then Tony went abruptly still, and Steve understood instantly why.

They were in the suite. The door was closed. Nobody had come back to retrieve the room service cart or the dishes. They were alone, and no one was looking at them.

And Tony had kissed him anyway.

Tony lurched away. He didn't get up, but suddenly there was a foot of space between him and Steve that hadn't been there before. He had his hands up, palm-out, almost defensive.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, quick, without looking away from Steve. "Pure habit, can you believe that? It's been all dates, all the time with us, it's like autopilot these days—"

"Sure," Steve heard himself say, before Tony could explain exactly how much he hadn't meant to do that in any more detail. "I understand. It's fine."

"Are you sure?" Tony was looking at him skeptically. "Because you can have a free shot or something."

Steve didn't understand what he meant, for a second; and then he clocked the way Tony had gestured to his own jaw, and he had to push himself up off the couch, because he couldn't stand to be there anymore.

"No," he said, too sharply. "No, Tony. I'm not going to _hit_ you."

"Okay, all right." Tony paused. "It's just you're looking a little wild around the eyes, so you'll forgive me if I—"

"I just need some air," Steve said, more loudly than he'd meant to. "That's all."

"Sure, yeah, no problem. I'll scream if someone tries to murder me."

Steve ought to laugh; that was his cue. He couldn't do it. He turned away, and Tony didn't stop him. He went out onto the balcony, and closed the door behind him with deliberately moderated pressure: he wasn't angry, or at least not at Tony, and he wasn't going to go around breaking anything, whether it was Tony's face or the door.

Madripoor was bright and alive during the day, but it blazed at night. Normally Steve might have been glad for the reminder that there was so much out there besides him and his problems, that the world was spinning on just fine for everybody else. But as it was, right now it felt as though it left nowhere to turn, nowhere he could go to be alone, surrounded on all sides.

He looked up at the sky, which was a little better. There was still light everywhere, reaching up into the dim high clouds, but that indefinable sense of crowding pressure eased. He tilted his head back even further, and slid his unsteady hands into the pockets of his slacks; and then the fingers of his right hand found the earpiece.

That was right—he'd taken it out when they'd arrived, so he wouldn't accidentally pack it away with the clothes he'd worn on the plane. He'd remembered to put it in his pocket this morning, but there hadn't been any reason, any need, to use it during the day. He'd had SHIELD's in place instead.

He took it out, popped the SHIELD comm out of his ear and put Iron Man's on instead. It had a sleek, simple shape, and he felt a single button under his fingertips. He pushed it.

There was a soft rush of white noise—the comm channel opening. And he wasn't going to let himself be disappointed or frustrated if Iron Man didn't answer. He didn't even know where Iron Man was, what timezone he might be in. For all Steve knew, he was in the middle of a firefight right this very moment, or fast asleep. Steve was probably about to be redirected to a recording device.

But he wasn't. There was a noise he couldn't quite identify, a faint voice cursing. A quiet clunk, another that sounded slightly further away, and then a huff of breath, a sense of motion in the sound as though it were somehow settling into place.

"Steve?" Iron Man said.

Steve closed his eyes, breath catching. Even if Iron Man was in the middle of something, even if he was about to apologize and sign off again, using the comm had been worth the trouble, just to hear his voice.

"Iron Man. I didn't mean to interrupt anything—"

"No, hey, no problem," Iron Man said quickly. "It's all 'hurry up and wait' right now, it's fine. I've got time." He fell silent for a beat. "So you two haven't killed each other yet, I take it. Congratulations."

"Thanks," Steve said, wry. "And you're all right?"

"All fine here," Iron Man agreed, and something eased in Steve's chest. "Like I said, there's not a lot going on right now. Frankly," he added, voice lowered a little, "I'm starting to think Fury might have overemphasized the danger here. Just a smidgen."

Steve frowned a little. SHIELD's intel was typically solid. He didn't think it was all that likely that they'd overestimated the seriousness of a threat.

But then Iron Man had always liked to downplay the amount of trouble he was in. Steve remembered thinking how much he appreciated that, the way Iron Man never acted afraid even when he probably was—and he did appreciate it, but sometimes it also meant it was hard to tell whether he was in a corner and just not telling you about it, over comms.

"Either way, I guess we'll see tomorrow," Iron Man was saying. "Probably not going to be a lot more action tonight." His voice was rueful, almost self-deprecating, and once he'd said it he paused and laughed, a soft huff of breath in Steve's ear. "On more levels than you know! I can't believe I walked into that one." He made a dismissive noise. "Anyway, what's up? I assume you didn't call just because you missed the sound of my voice."

It was a joke; his tone made it obvious, deliberately dramatic and soppy, amusement peeking around the edges of it. He didn't know Steve had thought almost exactly that not a minute ago—Steve felt himself flush, and was dimly grateful Iron Man wasn't standing right here looking at him.

"No," he said, and he managed to keep it dry and level. It was true, after all; that hadn't been the reason, even if Steve _had_ missed him. "But it isn't that important. I just wanted to talk to you, if I could."

Iron Man was silent for a moment. "He's driving you up a wall, huh?" he said at last, more gently than Steve had been expecting. "Listen, on his behalf, I'm sorry, even if he's never going to say it. Four more days, and you don't have to even look at him again if you don't—"

"What?" Steve said. "No, I told you, I don't mind. I don't mind him, he's—he hasn't done anything wrong."

He hadn't, after all. A mistake he hadn't intended to make. Habit, autopilot. It was understandable. It hadn't been his fault, and he couldn't have known that it would—that Steve was—

"Steve," Iron Man said slowly.

"It's just hard, that's all," Steve said.

It came out strained, his throat half closing on it. He covered his face with his hand.

It shouldn't matter. He shouldn't be making it Iron Man's problem. But it was—it was as though all this, the dating, the places Tony had taken him and the way the world had begun to feel familiar again, that Steve's life wasn't made up of SHIELD and Captain America and nothing else, that he'd tried new things and seen the universe in high-definition and eaten cake off Tony's fork, it had opened something up inside of him. It had opened something up that had been closed tight, nailed shut, and Steve couldn't get it back in there; it didn't fit anymore. It didn't fit inside the box it had been in, and sometimes it almost didn't fit inside _him_ : it pressed on his heart until it ached, it made it hard to breathe, it made his hands shake; he was too small to hold it, even at twice the size he used to be—

"Steve," Iron Man was saying, quiet but urgent. He'd said it a couple times already, Steve began to understand. "Steve?"

"It's hard," Steve managed to repeat, after a second. "Being here this way, with him, when it's not real. When it doesn't count for anything, and he doesn't mean it."

He stopped. He hadn't said anything, not really, but at the same time it already felt as though he'd made himself painfully obvious. And Iron Man was smart, Iron Man was his friend, so if anybody would understand what he meant—

"Oh, jesus," Iron Man said blankly.

Steve laughed, short and sharp, even though it wasn't really funny.

"Okay, all right, sorry, I was—that was not the problem I thought you were having. Obviously. I, uh." Iron Man cleared his throat. "Look, Steve, that's perfectly understandable. First time you've really gotten to know anybody since they thawed you out—and no," he interrupted himself, clearly anticipating an objection, "I don't count, we punch people in the head together for SHIELD; that's your _job_ , Steve, but that's not supposed to be the same thing as your life.

"So: first time you've really gotten to know anybody, first time you've actually had a reason to do anything other than sit in your SHIELD quarters and stare at the wall. First time you've ever done anything like this with a man, too. And you've been seeing the guy five times a week and now you're stuck with him twenty-four hours a day. It's no wonder it feels like—" Iron Man hesitated, as though he didn't want to use the looming word when Steve hadn't. "But it'll be fine. Okay? This'll be over in four days, and then you'll get back and you won't have him in your face all the time, and you'll—"

Oh. Steve laughed again, laughed and shook his head. He let his hand fall, made himself look out across the city, the ocean, the lights. Millions of people, going about their lives; feeling this, too, some of them, and bearing it somehow, surviving it.

He couldn't blame Iron Man. He'd thought that himself. He'd told himself it would wear off, it had to. It would go away. It had to go away, because he hadn't known what he was going to do if it didn't.

"I won't," he said aloud, quiet.

"Well, of course you don't think so right now," Iron Man said, tone calm, frustratingly soothing. "But I promise you, Steve, you'll get over it. You'll get over it, and you'll look back and you won't know what the hell you were thinking, getting hung up on somebody like him. You'll be fine."

 _I won't_ , Steve thought, but he wasn't going to say it again. Iron Man wouldn't listen to him. He could tell; Iron Man was almost as stubborn as Steve was, and he'd never understood it before, any of the times Steve had tried to explain to him that Tony was actually kind of fantastic.

But that was all right. Steve knew, and in a way Iron Man's doubt had made it easier. Being doubted only ever made him more sure. And he'd always felt better, always seen more clearly, when he knew what was right and what was true, what he could live with and what he couldn't. When he'd gotten into that plane with Howard and Peggy, after being told that there was nothing he could do, and suddenly everything had snapped into place—after months listening to people tell him he needed to stick with the USO, he was doing good work, feeling useless and stifled and letting it go on anyway. When he'd told Iron Man about himself, it had been like that, too, after a lifetime of letting people tell him there was something wrong with him, a lifetime of letting himself believe it.

"Sure," Steve said instead. Iron Man was going to find out he was wrong sooner or later, after all. It didn't much matter whether he listened right now.

"Okay," Iron Man said, sounding relieved. "Okay, great. Good. Everything's going to be all right."

"As long as I don't let Tony get murdered," Steve said.

"Right, yeah, that," Iron Man agreed, and laughed.

They talked a little longer. It wasn't anything important—Iron Man griped a little about what a pain it was trying to repair his armor in the field, when he needed a real worktable. Steve told him about Madripoor, the hotel, the expo.

At last Iron Man admitted it was probably about time he checked in with his team. Steve agreed, and they signed off, and then it was just Steve, standing alone on the balcony, looking up at the sky.

* * *

The second day of the expo was about the same as the first had been, to start with.

Steve didn't sleep long, and woke alone; Tony still hadn't come to bed. This time, though, when Steve went out into the main room, Tony was there and he was awake.

"Hey," he said, and then smiled and yawned at the same time, which was something to see. "Ugh, sorry, I need about four more cups of coffee and we'll be good." He had a tablet in his hand, and he held it up. "Actual SI presentation today, so. Figured I'd better at least look at the material before I'm up there trying to explain it without any six-syllable words."

 _NEVER COULD RESIST SHOWING OFF_ , Steve remembered with a jolt.

That was the first difference: the cold trickle of unease down the line of his spine, the sudden certainty that he wasn't going to leave the suite this time without the shield.

He'd decided against it the day before. The shield didn't lend itself to inconspicuous concealment, and there was a lot Steve could do without it, in basically any combat space that held furniture. If bullets had been involved, then at a bare minimum he could've put himself between them and Tony; unless they hit exactly the right spots, he wouldn't die, and he'd heal from them much faster than Tony would. Fury had given him the leeway to make his own tactical decisions, and he'd used it.

But now he had an excuse—since Tony was presenting, Steve could play the part of roped-in assistant. The shield would fit in the briefcase SHIELD had packed for that express purpose, and Steve would look as though he were just holding extra papers for Tony, or maybe backup prototypes. That was a cover he hadn't had a day ago.

He had the uniform, too, but that was less important. Less important, and hard to fit under a suit, a dress shirt. Besides, he wouldn't be able to hide it if he needed to, not the same way he could set down the briefcase or throw it away.

Once they were ready, they left the suite. Tony didn't seem to have picked up Steve's mood, or else maybe he thought he was compensating for it, talking with bright energy about getting to show off for SI as they went down the hallway. Steve probably looked grim, face settled into the determined lines it took on when he was ready for a fight, but he didn't feel grim; he felt almost calm, steady and sure, prepared to do whatever he was going to have to do to keep Tony alive.

At the elevators, he realized belatedly that there might be another reason Tony was trying to be inoffensively cheerful this morning. While they were waiting for one to arrive, he touched Tony's cheek and said, "Sorry, wrong side of the bed this morning," and then kissed Tony's mouth before he could talk himself out of it—because if Tony was worried Steve was still angry, Steve ought to make sure he understood he didn't need to be.

Tony stared at him after, for a second. And then the elevator arrived, swift and silent, and Tony cleared his throat and took Steve by the arm, and they got in.

Everybody seemed to want to see what Tony Stark had to offer; apparently they knew it was going to be a good show, because the hall where SI was set up was packed. Steve didn't like that very much.

There was a lightshow first, a little music. Steve didn't like that, either. It made it harder to hear, harder to pick out anything unusual about the faces in the crowd. He flexed his hand around the handle of the briefcase, reminded himself of the solid weight of the shield inside. He was ready.

In the end, his first clue that something was wrong didn't come from the crowd, anyway. It came from the comm in his ear.

Not Iron Man's—SHIELD's. The SHIELD team wasn't supposed to open a channel to Steve unless it was to transmit an emergency code to let him know they were injured, under attack, or otherwise compromised.

But he heard a sudden rush of air, a crackle, and had tensed in place before he understood it wasn't coming from the room around him, but from the speaker in his ear. Dead air, and then another burst of white noise. Dead air again—and then he managed by the skin of his teeth not to flinch at a much louder sound. It only transmitted for a fraction of a second, he couldn't identify it; but that definitely wasn't a good sign.

No one was looking at him. He took a chance, turned his head and murmured into his shoulder to ask for a solid copy from someone, anyone. The comm was more than sensitive enough to pick that up—he'd tested it himself.

Nothing.

He tried again, already starting to move. Tony was talking, a display made of light suspended in the air and rotating in front of him; but he wasn't on a stage so much as a simple raised platform. Steve stepped up onto it, coming toward Tony from the side, and Tony must've seen him do it out of the corner of his eye, because he turned toward Steve, eyebrows high, surprised.

They had to get out of here. Whether the SHIELD agents were down or there was some kind of jammer cutting communications—either way, that meant someone was about to try to make something bad happen.

He reached out and gripped Tony's shoulder, leaned in close and said, "Tony—"

"No, wait, don't tell me: something's wrong," Tony said.

"We should go," Steve said. "This isn't exactly a space that's easy to secure."

They were keeping their voices low, but it was probably too much to hope this looked like casual affection, given that Steve had just interrupted Tony in the middle of his presentation. Already there was a murmur rising, overlapping voices, as people turned to each other wondering what was wrong.

"Can we get everybody out?" Tony was saying. "Set off a tsunami warning or something, get the hotel evacuated—"

" _You_ need to get out of here," Steve countered, because that didn't seem to be on Tony's mind, but it was sure as hell on Steve's. Yes, of course they needed to worry about the rest of the civilians in here—but they'd be safer with Tony somewhere else, since he was the target, and so would Tony.

But Tony was already shaking his head. He moved, tucked each hand into the opposite sleeve cuff; a nervous gesture, Steve might have thought, except that it seemed so purposeful, Tony's eyes clear, Tony's head up.

"I'm fine," Tony said, "I know the shit's about to hit the fan. They don't. Look, I'll go too, obviously you don't need the distraction, but we need to—"

The rest of the sentence was drowned out by something enormous crashing through the ceiling.

People screamed. Rubble smashed to the floor—because this convention hall was big, but the hotel was bigger, and there were at least ten floors above it. Whatever this was, it had slammed its way through all of them, and there was plaster, cement, concrete, raining down in chunks the size of Steve.

He moved, threw himself off the stage and pushed someone out from under one before he caught it on the yoke of his shoulders. He set it down after, and was already turning around when Tony shouted, "Here!" and the shield came hurtling toward him. The briefcase—he'd dropped it, unthinking, but Tony had had the sense to duck down and pry it open to get the shield out anyway.

He caught the shield, adjusting; his suit jacket, the dress shirt underneath, didn't add up to as much thickness as his uniform, and the grips were a little looser than usual over his hand and forearm because of it.

And then whatever it was that had come through the ceiling landed on the platform, not far from Tony.

The platform groaned and then gave way, but it wasn't high. The thing landed on the marble floor underneath, undamaged. It was—Steve couldn't understand it at first, couldn't turn its dimensions and angles into anything he understood; it was moving, he thought, growing, and then he realized it was just uncurling. It was a figure. It was—

No, it wasn't Iron Man. It was built along the same fundamental principle, a thickly-plated and fully-articulated suit that a man could fit inside, but beyond that it didn't actually look like Iron Man at all. It was half again as big, for one thing, huge heavy limbs, shoulders hulking like a football player's pads. And it wasn't red and gold, clean and gleaming; the plates that made up its surface were dull, unpainted, scratched and nicked here and there.

It took Steve another moment to understand that there was one more difference. He'd thought whoever was inside it must have a helmet like Iron Man's, a faceplate—but then he saw that he'd been wrong.

There was no helmet. It was a man, and he looked furious, triumphant, mouth drawing up in a satisfied sneer. But there was something wrong with his face. Half of it, it was—it wasn't covered in metal, it _was_ metal. The rest of the skin was heavily scarred, twisted and inflamed; it was as though the metal had been _melted_ onto him.

People were still screaming, running. An alarm was blaring somewhere, sirens starting up in the distance. But the three of them, Steve and Tony and the man in the armor, were trapped as if in a tableau, for a stretching moment: Tony, still crouched over Steve's briefcase, looking up, eyes huge and face pale; the man, standing over him, looking down, with that grim pleased expression; and Steve with his shield in his hand, unforgivably far away, half a dozen strides across the floor.

"Tony," the man said, in a low grating voice.

"Obadiah," Tony said, almost levelly.

Obadiah—Obadiah _Stane_? He was dead. He was supposed to be dead, Steve amended, and tried to remember what the file had said. It had been one of the ones he'd gone through even though SHIELD had eliminated Stane from contention, wanting to be thorough; he was glad for it, now. Stane had been killed—seemed to have been killed—in an arc reactor explosion that had taken out what amounted to multiple city blocks. They hadn't found a body, but they wouldn't have, in a blast that size, at that kind of heat. It was no wonder he'd been declared dead.

Steve had asked Iron Man about him, too. He'd been friends with Tony for a long time, he'd run SI, and then something had happened. Iron Man had called it an extreme clash in management style; Tony had come back from Afghanistan changed, driven, wanting to restructure SI completely, and Stane had been infuriated at having the company he'd controlled in Tony's name abruptly yanked out from under him. But that was all Steve knew—Iron Man had waved him off, reiterated that Stane was dead and not exactly at the top of the list of Tony's present-day enemies.

"It's been a while," Obadiah was saying, tone disconcertingly warm, even effusive.

"Not long enough," Tony said, and stood. "I have to tell you, I'm not feeling so bad about half-assing your memorial service. I just wanted to forget you a lot more than I wanted to memorialize you. Didn't realize you hadn't even done the one thing I was still willing to thank you for."

Obadiah's face twisted. "You're going to regret that," he spat. "You're going to regret a lot of things."

"Doubt it," Tony said, mild.

He'd banter with Stane all day, if Steve let him. Steve moved, got the shield in front of himself—now all he had to do was get back up there and get it in front of Tony—

The light changed. Something else was coming through the hole Stane had left in the building.

No, six. Six things. Stane had let himself crash to the floor, had only bothered to try to ease his own landing at the last instant he'd touched down. But these moved almost like Iron Man, diving down and then slowing themselves with jets in their hands and feet. The jets didn't look quite like repulsors, though, or at least not the kind Iron Man had. These didn't burn with that clean pale intensity; they flickered, white and then red and then white again, spitting hot sparks.

And they were built like Stane, huge and blocky, graceless.

They landed in a rough circle around Tony and Stane, one of them right in front of Steve. And the one thing they didn't have in common with Stane was that they had full helmets—or, Steve thought, heads. Were these suits, too, with people inside them? Or just robots?

He didn't know how to tell. The one in front of him had fixed glowing eyes on him, and was swinging an arm at him; he caught the blow on the shield just to make sure he could, just to see how much his strength was going to count for here. He only skidded a few inches across the marble, and he was able to push back, shove the arm away from him—that was a good sign.

The two on either side of him, the next closest in the arc they'd all come down in, turned toward him too. The motion seemed robotic to him, but maybe Stane didn't have Tony's precision, maybe their joints didn't move the same way Iron Man's did. He didn't want to kill anyone if he could help it, especially not without knowing what Stane might have done to them.

He shoved the first one away with a firm blow from the front of the shield instead of the edge. The second came at him from the left, the third from the right, and he ducked down, swung the shield out and knocked the legs of one sideways and then brought it up over himself to stop the next blow coming at his head. He could hear Tony talking, quick and hard, angry; he couldn't do anything about it, but at least Tony wasn't screaming—

And then, at last, he had his answer. The third bot tried to punch him again, but this time it compensated, clumsily, for the shield: it brought its arm down over the edge, _onto_ the edge, like it was trying to knock the shield out of his hands, and when it pulled away for another go, he could see its forearm had been cut over halfway through its width. Metal plates, wires, some kind of hydraulics line that probably went down to its wrist, its hand—but that dripped something blue, and that was all. No blood.

Reassured, he switched gears, turned the shield sideways and drove it straight at the neck of one, before reversing the blow with an angled swing that caught another in the chin and sheared half the head right off. The body was still moving, but that was fine; he kicked it into the first bot, which had been coming up behind it, and they both toppled with a loud clang.

Steve could see Tony again, now that they weren't in front of him anymore. And Tony was—Obadiah had him, one massive metal hand closed tight around his upper arm, knees bending in the wreckage of the platform where his weight in the armor had broken it, clearly about to take off again.

"Tony," Steve shouted.

Tony looked at him. He wasn't struggling, wasn't doing anything—maybe he'd just decided it was pointless, that there was no way he could work himself free of Stane's obviously enhanced grip.

"It's fine," he said. "Don't worry. I know you're going to, but—"

Stane took off with a roar that drowned Tony out, which was for the best, because if Steve had had to listen to the rest of that sentence he might actually have punched Tony for real. _Don't worry_ , of all the idiotic—Steve couldn't _stand_ it.

Stane's boot jets were even more powerful than the ones on the bots, practically rockets, spewing smoke and afterburn. Steve had to twist away from the heat for a second, and then it was just him and four more bots, the first disentangling itself from the headless one he'd shoved at it and rising to its feet again.

He could at least save the rest of the expo guests, the hotel staff, from them. But then what the hell was he going to do? He wasn't Iron Man, he couldn't fly. He couldn't even get in touch with SHIELD and ask them to track Stane for him. How was he ever going to catch up?

Except, he realized, they weren't coming toward him anymore. They were forming up, the four of them, into what was now more of a square with two of them smoking on the floor, and Steve saw the way they moved, joints bending, and had about two seconds to understand what was happening before they took off to follow Stane.

Two seconds was enough. He gathered himself, leapt and held the shield close against his chest, and with his other arm, his hand, he reached out and caught one of them—they were already off the floor, but that was fine. He closed his hand tight around what turned out to be the base of a shin, just over the ankle joint, and he dug in so hard he felt metal bending under his fingertips.

His weight was enough to slow the one he'd grabbed onto, compared to the other three. But it wasn't enough to stop it.

Either it couldn't adjust its flight path to account for the extra cargo, or it wasn't trying. The trip up through the hotel building was a blur of floors, walls, dust, shocked faces visible for a fraction of a second and then gone; and it was punctuated by a burst of pain in Steve's shoulder, slamming into the ragged edge of a floor. His hip, his leg. His shoulder again. But he gritted his teeth and didn't let go, and then they were out.

Madripoor grew smaller underneath him. Steve didn't look down. He wasn't going to fall into the sea this time; and if he did, he wouldn't freeze. All he had to do was hold on.

The blot in the sky ahead of him had to be Stane. He turned his face into the screaming wind and squinted, trying to guess: it looked like the bots were following Stane. That was good. Stane didn't have a helmet, and Tony wasn't wearing anything but a business suit. If Steve had to bet, Stane wasn't going to fly high enough to suffocate Tony. He hadn't scraped himself back together from nothing after that explosion, built these things, hacked SI and lurked in wait all this time just to incidentally asphyxiate Tony at high altitude.

Which meant Steve would be fine. It really was lucky, he thought grimly, that Fury had picked him for this. Besides the Avengers, there wasn't another SHIELD agent who'd have been able to move fast enough, jump far enough, to hitch a ride like this—or to keep hanging on, at this kind of speed.

And it looked as though he was about to get even luckier than that. He'd been half expecting to be dragged out over the ocean, but instead, as best he could tell, they were circling the island. Madripoor covered most of the land it had to its name, but not all of it. There were cliffs, stretches of jungle, too unstable and too hard to get to for anyone to have built a highrise on them. That had to be where Stane had been hiding.

Something was happening ahead of him. He couldn't tell what it was; his vision was sharp, but Stane had a hell of a lead on him, and the trail of smoke and debris Stane's boot jets left clouding the air behind him didn't help. For an instant, Steve thought he saw two dots, maybe three, and his heart clenched in his chest. But if Stane had dropped Tony, he caught him again a moment later. He hadn't come this far just to splatter Tony across a Lowtown sidewalk, either.

Stane dove. The bots followed him. They were dropping lower over one of those slices of jungle—and then, abruptly, they fell.

Steve twisted, helpless, and caught one last glimpse of Stane in the air. He must've noticed Steve was there, given the bots a new set of instructions somehow, because all four of them were dropping like stones.

But Steve still had his shield.

They crashed through the trees; Steve curled himself up as small as he could, behind the arc of the shield, and then let go of the bot. It was a hard landing, his hip and shoulder on one side aching fiercely where they'd been pressed against the shield. But they started to heal up fast enough that Steve could actually feel it happen, which meant he probably hadn't broken anything. He could lose bruises inside half an hour, if he'd eaten enough beforehand.

He tested both just in case, and then got up. His suit was a loss, obviously, but the jacket in particular wasn't going to help him here. He shrugged it off, and took the opportunity to ditch his tie and roll up his sleeves. He didn't need to give Stane a noose to strangle him by, and he wanted sensation along his forearms, the ability to feel air move around him and respond, more than he wanted the feeble protection of a single layer of poplin.

He had the shield, and he had himself. That was as much as he'd ever needed. He glanced up through the trees, and past the smoke rising up where the bots had crashed, a little way ahead of him, he could see the thick line Stane had left in the sky.

Not too far. Steve hitched the shield up a little higher on his arm, and started running.

Obadiah Stane had a bunker, set into the cliffs on the far side of Madripoor.

Steve thought at first he'd hit the ground harder than he'd realized. But he closed his eyes and took a couple deep breaths and then looked up again, and it was still there.

It looked as though—well. It looked as though it was from World War II.

Which made sense, Steve knew. Madripoor was on the edge of what had once been the Pacific theater, in a strategic location. Of course it had fortified itself.

But another part of him wanted to laugh. Stane couldn't have picked a setting Steve felt more capable in. Steve had gone bunker-busting more than a few times; depending on the design, how wide the mouth of it was and what kind of cover he had to work with, he could throw either the shield or himself in and get about the same results.

But he'd never done it to rescue a man. And he'd never done it in the face of a pile of Stane's overpowered robots.

There was obviously an actual entrance somewhere. But Steve didn't bother looking for it. He just climbed on top of the bunker itself where it had been carved into the cliff, and there wasn't anything to stop him from dropping down from the outer edge that overlooked the sea, swinging his legs in and sliding through the open mouth of it, where guns would normally have been lined up to fire outward.

Or, well. There wasn't anything that succeeded in stopping him, at least.

There were more bots. But Stane had picked power, weight and heft and sheer knockout force, over speed or coordination. And now that Steve knew there weren't people inside them, there was nothing to stop him from chopping them into scrap.

It was hard work more than it was anything. They were huge and heavy, and it took more than one blow to stop them unless Steve hit them exactly right. He was healing fine, but he'd taken a beating being dragged out of the hotel, and another when Stane had told the first set of bots to crash into the jungle. It was hot, too, and he leapt and dodged and swung, kicked the bots' legs out from under them and knocked their heads off, and in between had to stop to wipe the sweat out of his eyes.

A couple of them cornered him for a minute. He couldn't use the shield for everything, not least because there was one of it and he had two hands; by the time he was done with them, he'd ripped up his knuckles, and there was a throb deep down in them that told him he'd probably cracked something.

He kept going.

Once he ran out of bots, he finally had a chance to take a look around. The bunker was pretty big, but Stane had expanded it even further, digging back into the cliff. Odds were he'd dragged Tony down there somewhere, but—

Steve paused, and reached for his ear. If there had been a jammer at the hotel, he was well outside its range now. He tried his SHIELD comm once, twice, turning it off and back on again, and the second time he got a crackling voice, indistinct.

"Rogers," he said, just in case they could hear him better than he could hear them. "Stark's been taken; it's Stane. We're outside the city—" He glanced out at the sea, made a guess at their coordinates and gave it.

Even the signal, bad as it was, was probably enough. They had to be able to track that.

And he couldn't stand the thought of wasting any more time up here instead of looking for Tony.

But there was one other person he could try.

He pulled the SHIELD comm out. He still had Iron Man's in the pocket of today's suit pants; it was cracked, probably from crashing into the jungle, but knowing Tony, that didn't mean it wouldn't work.

He put it in his ear, and touched the button on the outside. "Iron Man?"

There was nothing, at first. The almost nonexistent hiss of an open channel, a click here and there because the connection was weak. But all the silence meant was that Iron Man was probably busy; just his luck Iron Man's mission had heated up at the same time his had—

The quality of the silence changed unmistakably. Steve went still. "Iron Man," he said again, quiet but clear.

It wasn't a voice that answered him. There were no words. But the sound had unmistakably come from a throat: a wet, choked, ragged gasp.

Steve's spine went cold. And then, before he could say anything, before he could even start figuring out what to do, the channel unceremoniously cut out.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and listened distantly to his heart pounding.

He couldn't do anything for Iron Man. He didn't even know where Iron Man _was_ , and even if he had he wouldn't be able to get there. Tony needed him, and—

And if Iron Man's mission had gone badly, maybe SHIELD wasn't coming after all. Maybe that was what that indistinct voice had been trying to tell him, the information he hadn't been able to hear.

Maybe there was no backup, and he was all Tony had.

He drew in a breath, and let it out.

And then he took the comm out of his ear, tucked it carefully back into his pocket, and made himself move, because there was no other choice.


	5. Chapter 5

He found Tony two levels down.

He didn't think about it, at first. He didn't see it. He didn't see anything except Tony's face; he was just grateful, wildly, recklessly.

He'd run into another couple handfuls of robots—by the time he reached Tony, there was a sharp ache digging into his side, blood seeping down over his hip, and something in his wrist was throbbing its way back to wholeness a bit at a time.

The instant he laid eyes on Tony, he stopped feeling any of it. Tony looked dazed, pale and disoriented, and he'd been struck, his lip split, his temple and brow bloody. Steve rushed to him, said, " _Tony_ ," and touched his face.

"No," Tony said, indistinct, mushmouthed. "No—Steve, don't. Steve—"

The first part that got through to Steve was his chest. Steve had gotten used to feeling the cool hard circle that covered Tony's breastbone, but he'd never seen more than the edge of it; and that, he understood now, had been a plate, something that concealed what was actually there.

Because what was actually there was a light. Round, with a triangular frame set into its surface; blue-white, stark and unmissable. Flickering intermittently, but shining out strong and clear in between those brief stutters.

And right now, it was surrounded by about half of a very familiar chestplate.

Steve's throat closed.

He touched it. It felt the same as always, looked the same as always, the gleaming red arc of it, the gold accents angled over the sides like ribs.

It was Iron Man's.

Tony was wearing Iron Man's armor.

Or—two-thirds of it, at least. Steve felt unbearably slow, comprehension coming to him in splintered pieces, though it couldn't have taken more than ten seconds for him to look Tony up and down, to understand what must have happened.

The armor was dead, or almost dead. The thing in Tony's chest, it was—Steve had never really wondered why it was there, had assumed it was just part of the design of Iron Man's armor to have the power source centrally placed, but it was _in_ Tony's chest; Steve had had no idea Tony still needed an arc reactor in there, and yet it was obvious the armor had been designed around it, around the fact that it was there. And it was failing. Stane had sapped it somehow, and then he'd dragged Tony down here and started prying the armor off him.

That was why his shoulders were showing, still half inside his suit jacket. That was why the helmet was gone; he'd been struck, all right, because the helmet had been cracked open like an eggshell and peeled off him, and he hadn't been able to stop it. There were twisted scraps, pieces wrenched askew, scattered on the uneven stone floor around him like some sort of terrible halo.

"Steve," Tony was repeating, breathless, " _Steve_ —no—"

He had to—he had to make sure Tony was all right, and he had to get them both out of here. Anything else could wait.

"Tony," he said, as steadily as he could. "Does the armor open?" He touched Tony's cheek, tried to get Tony's eyes to focus on him. "How do I get you out?"

"You can't," Tony rasped.

" _Tony_ ," Steve said, half furious and half desperate.

And then there was a sound behind him, and he realized in a rush that Tony hadn't meant Steve couldn't get him out of the armor—he'd meant Steve wouldn't have time.

Steve ducked low, aware as he did it of the motion of air above him, a sweeping sound; Stane's armored fist swung over him, a clean miss, and he rolled, tipping himself over the shield and then coming up with it on his arm, facing Stane.

Stane must've known he was coming. Had heard him, or had been receiving some kind of data from the robots, or something. He'd left Tony lying in the middle of the room, maybe knowing Steve would go straight for him or maybe just hoping he would. Wanting to get the drop on him, while he was distracted trying to help Tony.

Lucky for Steve Tony had kept his eye on the ball.

"You're _nothing_ ," Stane was roaring, swiping at him again—Steve took the next blow straight to the middle of the shield, and it was jarring, easily twice as heavy as any hit the robots had been able to deal out.

And then he reeled back, teeth gritted around a cry he didn't want to let out, bright searing agony streaking its way up the side of his throat, his jaw.

He'd forgotten. The robots had swapped between direct blows and ranged fire like—well, like exactly what they were, machines running programs. None of them had been able to use the combination to their advantage, even as straightforwardly as Stane had: getting Steve to set himself up, bracing to take a hit he could block, and then firing a palm-jet point-blank before he'd disengaged.

And Stane's jets weren't like Iron Man's repulsors, more clean precise force than heat. They _burned_.

Steve twisted away, ignored the pain and the smell, leapt over the kick Stane aimed at him next and then used his own momentum, his own body weight in the air, to bring the edge of the shield down with a sharp clang on the armor covering one of Stane's shoulders. Stane yelled, which was good; and when Steve had landed, whipped away to avoid Stane's wild furious attempt to grab after him and then turned to get a good look, he could see a deep heavy dent in the metal, which was even better.

Seemed like the same stuff Stane had used to make the robots. And the shield had been able to drive right through them, if Steve aimed it right. Stane's collarbone was probably broken, and he'd already been bigger than Steve, heavier, slower. The more Steve could slow him down, the better.

It probably wouldn't have worked if they'd been up top, on the edge of the cliff or even the top of the bunker. With room to make full use of his flight capability, Stane would have flown out of Steve's reach, let him hurl the shield as much as he wanted and then come right back down to crush him.

But they weren't up top. They were in the scratched-out chipped-deep pit Stane had dug for himself, surrounded by stone, and there was nowhere for him to go where Steve couldn't follow.

Steve tore his knuckles open all over again on the metal half of Stane's face, jammed the shield into the joint of Stane's wrist and the backs of Stane's knees, the ankle of one leg, anywhere he could get the edge to land with all the force of his strength and his anger behind it.

Stane powered through, backed him up against one rough-hewn wall and slammed him into it with an impact that knocked the breath out of him.

And then, without warning, Stane was blasted sideways.

It didn't knock him over; he grunted, curled in on himself, and skidded a little, making a harsh screeching sound against the floor.

But it was enough to give Steve an opening to swing the shield into his shoulder and get clear. It was—

It was Tony.

The suit was still mostly dark, the only real light showing at the chest. Tony obviously couldn't stand, or else he'd have done it already. But he'd managed to redirect power to one arm, and he had his hand up, palm out, bracing himself at the elbow with his other hand and blinking furiously, jaw set.

"All right," Stane bit out, with a quick irritated shake of his head. "Don't get me wrong, this has been fun, but I've had enough."

That didn't sound good, Steve thought, wry. He took the two steps to put himself in front of Tony.

"JARVIS," Tony was saying weakly behind him. "Low-power mode if you can. JARVIS?"

"Sir," JARVIS replied—so quiet it was almost inaudible, even to Steve, and tinny as hell, but there.

"What's he doing?"

"Broadcasting a signal, sir."

"Aw, crap," Tony breathed.

And Steve could guess where that signal was going just as well as he could. He was really getting tired of fighting Stane's damn robots. It wasn't tactically difficult, but it took so much strength, even for him, and Stane seemed to have dozens of them packed away in here.

"Okay, okay, wait—Steve."

"It's all right," Steve said over his shoulder, planting his feet, adjusting his grip on the shield. He was dimly astounded his dress shoes had lasted this long; he'd have to figure out where SHIELD had gotten them. "I can handle them."

"Might," Tony gasped, "not have to. JARVIS, can you do the thing? With the drones?"

"Mr. Stane's grasp of networking is broad but simplistic," JARVIS assessed. "Brute-forcing entry is inelegant but possible."

"Great, great, fantastic. Steve, I, uh. I can't get up. You're going to have to help me."

Tony's voice wavered, as if he was uncertain. Steve, in a moment of sudden perfect clarity, hated it. The last thing he wanted was for Tony to ever have to feel uncertain about whether Steve would help him, no matter who he was or wasn't.

Steve kept the shield up, but Stane was still busy, focused on the controls in his armor; he could risk turning his head, looking down at Tony for real. "You got it," he said, and he made it firm, sincere.

"Okay," Tony said, more steadily. "Even better. JARVIS, ten seconds?"

"Fifteen would be preferable."

"Ten," Tony said.

"Very well, sir."

"Nine. Eight—"

"Don't even think about it," Stane shouted at them, grin wide and full of teeth.

"—Six. Five—"

The wall behind Stane was shuddering. God, were they—were they coming _through_ it? They had to be. Maybe that was among the orders Stane had given them: to gouge their way through the stone, a straight line right to his position, from wherever they were in the bunker complex.

Steve backed up a step. Rock cracked and showered down behind Stane, and suddenly the manic light in his eyes was echoed in a dozen pairs that were glowing much more literally. A dozen, two dozen, more and more of them—

"—three, two—"

Close enough.

Steve abandoned his stance, turned on his heel and ducked down to grip Tony under what was left of the suit's arms, curling his fingers securely around one open edge of the chestplate. He had to do most of the lifting with one arm, shield on the other, holding Tony against his chest; he remembered thinking Iron Man's suit looked heavy, and boy, it really was.

And the moment he got Tony up off the stone floor was the moment the robots went still.

Stane didn't seem to understand what was happening, at first. And then, one at a time, they moved: turned to face him, instead of aiming themselves forward toward Steve and Tony.

"What? No. No! Tony, you son of a bitch, what the fuck do you think you're playing at?" Stane snarled the words, turning as if he were about to come at Tony himself, but his own—drones, that was what Tony had called them—his own drones had already surrounded him. "Override, _override_ —" He fired, once and then again, again, shouting something else Steve didn't care enough to try to parse, and then Steve had Tony out of the room, into the slanting corridor that snaked unevenly back up to the first level.

Tony got the use of one leg of the armor back about halfway up, and then the other. He was still shaky, blinking too much, and Steve realized for the first time that he wasn't just pale—that there was a dark creeping pattern, veins traced out in sick pulsing detail, retreating an inch at a time from the sides of his face; and blood, thick, drying slowly on his throat where it had dripped from his ears.

He wouldn't answer, when Steve asked what the hell Stane had done to him. "Later," he said instead, "later, let's just—please—" and Steve couldn't bear to push him on it after that.

They got out. Steve didn't try to force Tony to climb out the same way Steve himself had come in; he helped Tony aim his one working palm repulsor at the ceiling of the bunker, and two blasts at a hundred and forty-two percent power sent hunks of concrete hurtling up and away and made a nice sizable hole.

Steve had thought—Steve hadn't thought anything. Steve hadn't let himself think anything. But if he had, it might have been that Tony had just kept a prototype for some reason. Had equipped whoever wore the Iron Man suit, but liked to give himself some nice toys, too; and of course he'd made the original version, the one that had gotten him out in Afghanistan, for himself, so it wasn't as though he'd never used a suit like it. It wasn't necessarily strange that he'd want to try out his own invention, no matter who else was using it at the same time.

But the way he moved in it, the smooth motion he used to aim the repulsor even when he was trembling all over—even the way he'd helped Steve, picked exactly the right time to fire it at Stane, because Steve and Iron Man had had so much practice fighting together, working with the openings each of them left for the other, saving each other again and again—

Steve would've known it, even if the comm, the comm Iron Man had given him that opened a channel straight to Iron Man's own suit, hadn't filled his ear with that helpless awful gasp. Iron Man's mission had gone badly, all right; Iron Man had been injured, no doubt about it.

Because Tony was Iron Man. He had been all along.

They helped each other up through the hole. Steve went first, and then hauled Tony through after him; Tony faltered, leaning into him, and god, it was disorienting. Iron Man's weight when he was in the armor, the cool clean feeling of the metal against Steve's hands—but that was Tony's hair, wild and going every which way, brushing Steve's cheek, and Tony's forehead, clammy, sticky with blood, pressing against Steve's temple. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say.

And then, so faint and distant that he almost wasn't sure it was real, he heard the unmistakable sound of a SHIELD helitransport.

"That our ride?" Tony murmured into the side of Steve's throat.

"Sure is," Steve managed.

"Awesome," Tony said, and passed out.

* * *

Steve didn't see Tony for almost a week, after they got back to New York.

It was fine. He needed the time. And Tony needed the chance to recover before they got debriefed.

Steve didn't go see him. Steve couldn't figure out how to go see him. He went back and forth about it again and again in his head—would it be better to do it, or not? He didn't know. He felt self-conscious about his body, the serum; twenty-four hours and he was fine, even the slowest-healing mess of tiny fractures in his knuckles completely gone. There was a part of him that hated the thought of showing up at Tony's bedside, whole and unmarked, when Tony was—when Tony had almost—

Steve kept hearing that sound, that wet straining gasp. It had been bad enough when he'd thought that was Iron Man. Because he'd also thought that Iron Man had a team at his back, that Iron Man was covered and it was Tony who needed him.

He'd told himself more than once that even if he lost Tony—figuratively, then—he'd still have Iron Man. But he'd almost managed to do it literally, and if he had, it would have been Iron Man, too, without him even knowing it. It would have been everything, gone before he'd even had a chance to understand that that was what it was.

And now—

He'd thought he'd been in trouble before. Yearning over Tony Stark, leaning too readily on Iron Man. He'd thought he'd been gone over Tony Stark, too ready to be kissed, too willing to be charmed, reassuring himself that at least he'd still have Iron Man, everything that was steady and true and admirable about him. He'd learned to like Tony Stark in spite of himself, in spite of every reason he'd collected not to do it, and he hadn't been expecting it to happen because the only real comparison he'd had had been the Avengers—Iron Man, how _good_ he was, how brave and funny and trustworthy he'd been and how easy Steve had found it to work with him.

He'd never managed to use the word _love_ to talk about the way he felt about Tony, not even in his own head. He'd always shied around it; he'd known that was where he was headed, where this road ended, but he hadn't taken that final tumble that would make it undeniable.

But now he understood that he was already there.

Tony Stark was Iron Man. Tony Stark had listened to Steve telling him he wasn't a hero, that he wasn't the man who lay down on the wire, and then he'd flown out there and talked Steve through saving the helicarrier, flown out there and caught a missile in his hands and almost killed himself to keep it from striking the city. He hadn't been insulting Iron Man's effort, Iron Man's brush with sacrifice, when he'd talked to Steve about it afterward; he'd been downplaying his own, the same way he always did. And Iron Man was Tony Stark. Iron Man had kissed his cheek, had sat across from him at a candlelit table and fed him cake, had turned their cover into a way to help Steve get to know New York all over again—into a way to help Steve get to know _himself_ all over again, when there wasn't a war on, when he wasn't Captain America; when you set aside most of what had come out of a bottle, and were left with just Steve.

(God. What had he done, that night Steve had called him on the dedicated comm? Rushed into the bedroom, hauled the suit out from wherever he'd hidden it—just so he could put the helmet on, just so he could make sure Iron Man was there for Steve. It was hilarious and not funny at all at the same time, in a way that made Steve's eyes sting.)

He'd thought Iron Man was everything Tony Stark wasn't, was exceptional in all the ways he'd judged Tony Stark and found him wanting. And then he'd learned Tony Stark had his own merits to offer, in his own ways. And now it turned out that was all the same person, and the only thing Steve could think was—he'd never had a chance.

Steve had already been sure Iron Man was wrong, that he wasn't going to get over Tony Stark like you'd get over a cold. That had already been true. He'd been up to his neck in it; the only thing that had changed, really, was that he'd learned he was already under, that it had already closed over his head months ago.

He didn't blame Tony. He couldn't. Hindsight made it a warning, the way Iron Man had said it: _you wouldn't know me if you passed me on the street_. All the reasons Steve had thought Iron Man might have for concealing his identity went double when he was actually Tony Stark—and of course it made grim sense out of Fury's insistence that Iron Man couldn't protect Tony, that he wanted someone else on the job; because if Tony got kidnapped, incapacitated, Iron Man very literally could not come to his rescue.

He wasn't angry, except maybe about the way Tony had pushed back. At the time, Steve hadn't thought twice about it; it had been Tony Stark being cavalier about his personal safety, not caring about the trouble SHIELD was willing to go to in order to help him. But now—that hadn't been an argument about whether Iron Man was sufficient security on his own. That had been an argument about whether Tony needed backup against a serious threat to his life. And if Tony had won it, then Steve wouldn't have been there in that bunker.

If there was anything Steve was struggling to forgive Tony for, that was it.

But he wasn't angry, mostly. He was embarrassed, a little, at first. Just remembering the way he'd talked to Iron Man about Tony, the things he'd admitted to thinking and feeling that he definitely hadn't thought he'd been saying right to Tony's face.

Except the more he thought about it, the less he cared what he'd said, and the more he found himself dwelling on everything else.

Because Iron Man had told Steve he understood Steve: that sometimes he didn't want to take the armor off, didn't want to be who he was when he wasn't Iron Man. Iron Man had told Steve Tony Stark was an asshole, that Steve was doing Stark a favor and if Stark had any sense, he knew it. That he'd known Stark longer than Steve had—and wasn't that a hoot, now that Steve knew exactly what he'd meant by it—and that Steve could do better. That Steve shouldn't settle.

_You won't know what you were thinking, getting hung up on somebody like him._

Steve would've taken it as a retroactive warning, Tony himself trying to ward off Steve's unwanted feelings, trying to talk him out of them before he said anything to Tony's face instead of to Iron Man.

Except it was Tony who'd said it in the car: _Unless it was important to me to do this right. Unless I knew it would be worth the wait. Which, for the record? It absolutely would be._

That wasn't anything Tony had needed to say. Not then, when they were alone in a moving vehicle, no audience but each other.

And it was Tony who'd kissed him over the remains of their room service in Madripoor, unprompted, no one to fool, moved by nothing except—maybe—the fact that he'd wanted to do it.

Steve had no idea what the hell that added up to. But he wasn't going to forget it.

Once Tony had been released from the tender embrace of SHIELD's medical wing, Steve got an alert: Fury wanted to see them both. Nine in the morning; same briefing room that had started this whole thing off. Steve had to swallow a laugh when he saw that part of the notification.

He went, at ten minutes to, with his heart in his throat. Not for his own sake—he'd just about reconciled himself to being relentlessly, stupidly in love with Tony for the foreseeable future. He wasn't ashamed of himself anymore, and he wasn't overwhelmed by it, most of the time. He didn't even really have to worry about hiding it. Tony had to know, after that last conversation Steve had had with Iron Man. So there was nothing Steve needed to do except bear it.

But seeing Tony again would be—Steve didn't know what to expect. He'd been dreaming of it on and off, Tony's pale shocky face, the blood on his cheek and brow and in his hair; that noise over the comm that had come from him, when Steve hadn't known it had been him.

Natasha was the only one in the room when Steve got there. To his surprise, she had a fading bruise at the angle of her jaw, a long cut crossing her forehead. She offered him a wry smile. "The SHIELD team you had on comms wasn't your only backup," she said.

Oh. Steve had heard that another team of agents had gone in, had—eventually—secured Stane and brought him in. But he hadn't known who was on it.

He wondered whether Natasha had been at the expo; whether, if he'd seen her there, he'd have recognized her.

"All right?"

She was watching him, gaze steady, face unreadable.

"Sure," Steve said.

"I hear it got a little rough," she said quietly.

Steve closed his eyes. "Yeah," he agreed.

She didn't say anything else, didn't press. She waited until Steve sat down next to her, and then she touched his shoulder for a moment, her hand warm and precisely placed, grounding.

Fury and Tony arrived at almost the same time, and Steve could tell why while they were still halfway down the hall. "I don't want to hear it, Stark!" Fury was saying. "Now _get in there_ ," and fifteen seconds later Tony swanned in as though he were there for his own amusement.

He looked all right, Steve thought. Not the way he'd been looking in Steve's head lately. There were small, neat black stitches in his lip, and he had clean white gauze taped down in a few places, peeking out from under his collar and cuffs, one small square on his forehead.

And he looked at Steve, and then away, and said over his shoulder, "Well? Waiting on you now, let's go."

Fury strode in, jaw set, and gave Tony a flat look.

After that, though, it didn't take long to get started. The first part was easy enough. Fury wanted Steve's side, from the moment he'd first realized something might be wrong through to their evacuation from the scene on the SHIELD transport. Steve recounted it a step at a time, and he didn't have to think about it, didn't pause, didn't look at Tony. It was just the truth, and the truth had always been easy for him.

"Okay," Fury said, when he was done. "Thank you, Captain. You'll be happy to hear that we were able to extract Stane from his armor, and all his drones—and the scattered parts thereof—have been accounted for and secured. Same goes for the armor he got off you, Mr. Stark. His base of operations has also been secured, and we're going through it with a fine-toothed comb. The administration of Madripoor is being astoundingly cooperative, because they're not too happy themselves about Stane having managed to wash up there unnoticed." He turned to Tony, mouth flat. "I assume I can't count on getting a report of similar clarity out of you."

"Probably not," Tony agreed breezily. "Seeing as I got hit on the head a couple times."

"So how about you just answer a couple questions for me," Fury suggested levelly, and then he took something in his hand and slid it across the table toward Tony.

No, not something. Two things. Devices of some kind, though Steve couldn't identify their purpose on sight.

Tony could, though, judging by the way his face changed. He didn't reach for them, didn't touch them.

"You know about that one," he said, tilting his chin toward one of them.

"The sonic paralysis device," Fury agreed, almost gentle. "Stane always liked that one, as I understand it."

Tony blew out a breath. "Yeah. And the other one is—I don't remember exactly what they were calling it, I wasn't involved with R&D at that point. Same chain of development, back when Obadiah was running things and I didn't give a shit." He cleared his throat. "The military didn't want that one, either. Handy little device, but it was too portable, too effective. Mass-produce those and pass them out, and you'd have insurgents slapping them on your own humvees in a week or two." He looked at it for a moment, and a sudden awareness came into his eyes. "Oh, of course that's how he survived. Son of a bitch."

"Stark," Fury said.

"Right, no, sorry. It's—keeping it as simple as possible, you might say it absorbs energy. Sucks it right up, melts it away. It's not an EMP, so systems that have been hardened are still vulnerable. It can disable just about anything that uses energy to function, pretty much." Tony looked up, and offered Fury a wry half-smile. "Cap covered the opening pretty well. Obadiah grabbed me, and we went out through the roof." Tony flickered a quick uncertain glance toward Steve. "I, uh. I thought it was better that way. Once we were up in the air, I'd be able to call the suit without Cap seeing me do it."

So that was why he'd been so calm, why he hadn't struggled with Stane. He hadn't wanted to, when Stane was about to solve a problem for him.

"He must've had the absorber with him all along," Tony was saying. "Probably had it with him that day—obviously it didn't get him out of there without a scratch, the explosion was too big for that, but it must've been able to blunt most of what came at him. Kept the heat low enough that he survived it, even with his armor melting around him. Anyway, I called the suit, figured I could handle it, and then he used it on me."

Steve tensed a little in his chair. He couldn't help it—Tony meant the arc reactor that fit in his chest, the one that had been put there to keep him alive. It powered the suit, and Stane had tried to _drain_ it—

"It didn't get the reactor," Tony said quickly. "I'm not sure it could have, actually, seeing as the relative capacity is—anyway. I built safeguards into the suit; if the power draw is so high it's going to affect the reactor's function, then unless I approve that power usage verbally, the suit cuts itself off. Happened so fast I didn't even get a chance to this time. The suit just went dead."

Steve stared at him. He sounded as though he thought that was good, an impressive degreee of attention to potential worst-case scenarios.

He sounded as though he hadn't just explicitly told them he'd created a system that would let the suit suck the arc reactor dry, as long as he _gave it permission_ to kill him.

God.

Tony gave Steve a quizzical look. Steve had no idea what expression was on his own face, but he tried belatedly to moderate it.

"Anyway, he dragged me off into that lovely little villainous lair of his, and then he used the other one. Like four times, which frankly struck me as kind of excessive. Didn't want any trouble while he was peeling the armor off, I guess." Tony paused. "I don't think he actually wanted the armor itself. He wasn't being careful with the pieces, so he clearly didn't need them in working order. He just—" Tony shrugged one shoulder. "He just wanted to take it from me. Same with the reactor. He knew taking it was going to kill me, and that was fine with him, but it wasn't the point. He just wanted to take it, same as last time."

"Last time," Steve repeated.

He'd asked Iron Man—asked _Tony_ —about Obadiah Stane. And Tony had said he was angry that Tony had reclaimed SI, and that he was dead. Nothing about sonic paralysis, nothing about taking the arc reactor _out of Tony's chest_.

Tony met his eyes, wincing: guilty as hell, and well aware of it. "Uh. Yeah," he said. "I—may have left a couple things out when I last talked to you about him."

A couple things. Good God. Steve was so appalled he couldn't figure out what to say.

"Listen, can we go into recess or something? Ten minutes. I just, um. I think Cap and I should talk."

"Oh, I'll do you one better," Fury said. "That's enough for now, Stark. Take the room."

He left. Natasha left, too, with a single steady glance at Steve that Steve had no idea how to interpret.

And then the door closed, and it was just him and Tony, looking at each other across the briefing room table.

"Hi," Tony said. "So, look, I get it. You're pissed, I'm a liability, I freely assume you don't want me on the team anymore, but I—"

"What?" Steve said.

"—won't let you—what?" Tony echoed, blinking. "What do you mean, 'what'? Which part of that was not a hundred percent accurate?"

Steve ran it back in his head. "All of it," he said.

"You're _not_ pissed?" Tony ventured, sounding deeply skeptical.

"Let's start at the other end," Steve said. "It isn't up to me whether you stay on the team, Tony. I'm not in charge of the Avengers. SHIELD is."

It was that simple, to Steve.

But Tony waved this off like it was nonsense. "Oh, come on. You know they'd listen to you if you told them you couldn't work with me. I've seen my file, Cap. It wouldn't take much." He looked at Steve for a moment, and then his jaw firmed, his chin coming up. "But I won't let you. Iron Man is—Iron Man's the best of me, the best thing I've ever done."

It was a declaration. Firm, belligerent. Defensive.

But Steve knew Tony, and the plea underneath made his throat tight.

"Tony—"

"You wouldn't even have to cite interpersonal friction," Tony said. "Just say I'm a strategic liability. Boom, done."

Steve had no idea what he was talking about. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Jesus, you really want to hash this whole thing out top to bottom, don't you," Tony said, and then raised both eyebrows and tapped what Steve knew was the upper curve of the plate covering the arc reactor.

Steve stared at it, and then at him.

"Look, I meant it, okay?" Tony said, voice hard. "I won't let it compromise the mission. The suit gets all the juice I've got, if it needs it—"

God. Tony _had_ known what he was telling them, when he'd said he'd set up the authorization to drain himself dry. He'd known what he was telling them, and he'd thought it was what they wanted to hear—what _Steve_ wanted to hear.

"It's keeping you alive," Steve said unsteadily.

"Yeah. Well, actually it was poisoning me," Tony amended, "for a little while there. But I fixed that. Now the only thing in my body actively trying to kill me is just the shrapnel again." He raised both hands, wiggled his fingers with false enthusiasm in a parody of celebration.

Steve couldn't stand it. "Tony," he said, as firmly as he could, "you did do something wrong. And I need you not to do it again. Ever."

"Okay, no promises, but hit me with it and I'll consider it," Tony said warily.

"You didn't tell me the truth about Stane," Steve said. "I asked you, and you made it sound like it was nothing. You knew the file didn't have everything, but you still didn't tell me."

Tony blinked, once and then again. "That's," he said, and then stopped. Opened his mouth, closed it, opened it. "That's what you're mad about?"

"I just spent weeks deliberately misrepresenting my identity," Steve said. "I'm not sure I get to throw stones on that one. I understand why you did it. I knew Iron Man wasn't going to tell me who he was, and if I had a problem with that, it would have been my responsibility to raise it months ago."

"Your responsibility," Tony repeated. "Me lying to you was your responsibility. That's an interesting take, Cap—"

"That's just how I see it, Tony," Steve said evenly. "And I know—" God, this was going to be hard to say. "—I know that it must have been uncomfortable at times. To have me choosing to confide things to Iron Man, when you couldn't—"

"Whoa, no, stop right there," Tony said.

Steve probably should have pressed on anyway, gotten it all out. But he stopped, and he was relieved to be asked to. HIs face was hot, his ears, and Tony could probably tell.

"That part is _definitely_ not your fault, Steve. You were talking to someone you considered a friend, okay, I understand that. I could've told you I didn't want to talk about Stark, and you wouldn't have pushed it. But I didn't. I wanted—"

Tony cut himself off. He didn't try to rephrase, didn't follow up. He fell silent. He was looking at Steve, throat working; and then he shook his head, jaw clenching, and looked down at his hands instead.

"I wanted to hear it," Tony said at last, low. "I wanted to listen. I wanted to be that person, someone you told things to. Someone you trusted. Someone you liked."

"You are," Steve said, helpless not to, because Tony kept using the past tense and it was like a fist around his heart every time.

And that made Tony's head come up again—Tony's eyes were bright, Tony's mouth parted and soft in surprise, as though whatever he'd expected Steve to say, that hadn't been it.

"I know you said," Steve added, and then had to stop and swallow, words catching in his throat. "I know you said I shouldn't get stuck on you, that I would get past it, and I—"

"Yeah, no," Tony said quickly, "that's fine, that's cool. I know you didn't—everything's different now, obviously. I'm not going to try to hold you to anything you said back then, Steve, you don't need to worry about that."

Steve frowned, just a little. "I'm not trying to take anything back," he said. "I meant it. I always try to mean anything I'm going to say. I just want you to know that I understand that you were in a difficult position, trying to talk to me about yourself; I'm not going to hold you to anything you said, either. I'm not going to hold it against you."

Tony was staring at him. He didn't know why.

"Oh," Tony said at last.

"Yeah," Steve agreed.

So it was fine. It was going to be fine. They'd talked about it, and Tony understood that Steve wasn't going to make things difficult for him. They were Avengers, and teammates; they were on the same page.

It wasn't everything Steve might have wanted, in the deepest greedy heart of himself. But he could live with it.

The next day, Tony told the rest of the team. Or at least he told the ones who were on the same planet he was.

Natasha had already known, or she wouldn't have been in that briefing room. But if Steve hadn't seen her there, he'd never have known for sure whether her placid reaction meant she was surprised or not; it could have gone either way. Clint and Bruce were easier, readily and visibly shocked. And Steve hadn't even thought about it, but once he did, he was grateful. He didn't know how well he'd have been able to keep it a secret from them. He'd have tried, if Tony had asked him to. But he could admit that Tony deciding not to ask made things a lot easier.

( _You're a genuinely terrible liar, Cap._ Tony had said that to him more than once, as himself and as Iron Man.

And it was truer, Steve thought, than Tony had given it credit for. Even lies Steve had tried to tell on purpose, going undercover with Tony, had relentlessly turned true on him every chance they got. It was almost funny, when he thought about it like that.)

Tony had called them all together, to the newly repaired top floor of the Avengers Tower. And then he'd bared a pair of bracelets on his wrists, and summoned the armor, which had come out from behind a panel in the wall and constructed itself around him. He stayed like that, turning Iron Man's faceplate, Iron Man's glowing eye panels, toward each of them long enough to let Clint and Bruce get a good look.

And then he flipped the faceplate up, revealing his face again, and said, "Ta-da."

"You have got to be kidding me," Clint said blankly.

"I wish that made less sense than it does," Bruce said.

"What, no applause?" Tony said, and he was trying to make it nothing but put-out, Steve could tell, but there was relief underneath clear as day.

It was strange, even for Steve. He'd seen Tony in the armor already, sure, but it hadn't exactly been a good time. Looking at him now, like this, Iron Man on the outside and Tony on the inside—it was undeniably odd.

But that didn't make it bad. It was going to be so much easier, knowing he could talk to Tony about Iron Man directly instead of asking him to pass along messages or boxed shawarma; and it was going to be good in other ways, too, knowing who was in the armor, knowing exactly what kind of face Tony would be making in there every time Iron Man tossed out a quip.

The Battle of New York had made them a team. But things like this—trusting each other not with their lives, not with the fate of the world, but with secrets, with what made them each themselves—was what was going to make them friends.

Steve waited his turn, and after Clint was done haranguing Tony for being even weirder than he'd realized ("—you literally talked about yourself in the third person! All the time!"), he stepped up and clapped Tony on the shoulder, feeling the familiar arc and curve of Iron Man's joint.

"That was a good idea," he said.

"Yeah?" Tony said. "You think so? Oh, hey, check this out," and the armor went still—went still, and began opening up. Just the front, Steve understood after a moment, folding itself away rapidly, until Tony could step out again and leave the rest of the armor like half a statue, standing there behind him. Tony was beaming, gleeful the way he always got when something he engineered worked the way he'd wanted it to, and Steve's heart squeezed itself so tightly in his chest that for an instant he couldn't breathe.

"It's great, Tony," he managed after a second.

"Not that hard, really," Tony said instantly. "I just needed to refine the mobile suit-up procedure a little. Easy enough to run it backwards, once it's there. Anyway—"

He paused, eyes skipping over Steve's shoulder; Bruce was the last one out, following Natasha and Clint, but he wasn't listening, hadn't paused to ask what was up, and a moment later they were alone.

"I, uh," Tony said, and then cleared his throat. "I thought you might want to know, SHIELD's got this kind of—super duper triple-dog-dare maximum security facility they're working on, and Obadiah's going to be their first long-term guest. So. No need to worry about him anymore."

"Good," Steve said firmly. Anything that kept Stane as far away from Tony as possible was fine with him, at the moment.

"Yeah," Tony said. "So."

He stopped.

"Tony," Steve said.

"Okay, look, I'm sorry, I just can't stand this, it's driving me nuts," Tony burst out. "Because I'm aware it doesn't mean what it sounded like it meant, but in that case I can't figure out what the hell it _did_ mean—"

"What what meant?" Steve said, bewildered.

"You! 'I'm not trying to take anything back,'" Tony parroted. "But you have to, don't you? I mean, you can't—you don't _really_ —"

Steve couldn't begin to guess what specifically he thought Steve didn't really. But on balance, whatever it was, Steve probably did.

"Sure I do," Steve said aloud.

It wasn't as hard to say as he'd expected.

"What? No," Tony said. "No, you don't. You didn't—it was cover. You were undercover. You weren't doing any of that because you wanted to. You said it was hard for you because _I_ didn't mean it, but that was obviously," and he actually paused to laugh, a quick sharp breath through his nose, "I mean, you were stressed, it was weird, I get that."

"No," Steve said patiently. "I meant it. I had feelings for you. I didn't know what to call them, but they were there."

Tony's face lit up, and he snapped his fingers and then stabbed them at Steve. "Past tense!"

God. Even this, Steve thought with distant amusement, they had managed to start arguing about.

"That's right," Steve agreed. "Past tense. I still have feelings for you. But they're a little different, and now I know what they are."

Tony's brow furrowed. "Like—"

"I love you," Steve said.

And that, strangely, was the easiest of all. It just came out, as though it had been waiting for its turn impatiently—as though what had actually been difficult had been saying anything else, all this time.

Tony was staring at him. "What?" he said, sort of faintly.

Steve was willing to say it again, he decided. He wasn't expecting anything in particular, except that it would be awkward for a while, at least until Tony decided he hadn't meant it or had gotten over it. But if Tony needed to hear it a few more times right now, he could.

"I love you," he repeated, quiet, steady.

"Hell, no," Tony said. "What? Are you—did Obadiah hit _you_ on the head? How did you— _why_ did you—I was Tony Stark at you! I _am_ Tony Stark. I'm rich and annoying and egotistical, I don't listen to you, I make jokes when you want to be serious, you hate all those things."

"Sometimes," Steve agreed.

"I mean, I'm also obviously an idiot for trying to talk you out of this," Tony added, "but there's this thing I've been working on really hard where I try to make stuff better instead of worse, and that mandate definitely includes preventing you from making an enormous mistake here."

"I think that's part of what makes it not a mistake," Steve said.

Tony looked at him as though he'd never heard anything so ridiculous; and then sudden determination stole over his face, grim and intent. "Okay, sure, you win," he said, rolling his eyes, and then he closed the space between them, curled his hand around the nape of Steve's neck and drew Steve down to kiss him.

Steve couldn't begin to imagine what point he thought he was going to make, but it didn't matter very much. This wasn't an argument Tony was going to win either way.

But Steve had missed kissing Tony. He hadn't even realized how much until right this instant, Tony's mouth against his one more time, and he made a helpless sound in the back of his throat, lifted his hands to Tony's face and held on for as long as Tony was willing to let him.

In a way—in the only way that really mattered—it was the first time they'd ever kissed. Not because anyone was looking at them, not because they had to; not even because Tony had forgotten for a moment that they didn't have to. And Steve went after it with everything he had, all the patience and determination and tenderness and frustration with which he loved Tony, because he had never taught himself how to give anything less.

Tony was the one who broke the kiss, at last. It took longer than Steve had expected it to, and he didn't push Steve away. He stood there, still clutching Steve's shoulders, with his cheek to Steve's; Steve could hear his heart pounding, his breathing rough and quick in his throat, and couldn't see his expression at all.

"That—did not go the way I expected it to," he murmured at last, a little dazed, against Steve's jaw.

Steve turned that over for a moment. "Well," he said, as mild as he could get it. "Maybe you better try it again."

And Tony drew away, at that, but only far enough to give Steve an almost resentful look. "Jesus, this was bad enough when you _weren't_ funny," he said.

Steve's heart turned over in his chest. "What was?" he asked, because that almost sounded like—

"Do not make me say it," Tony muttered, avoiding Steve's eyes. "It doesn't go well when I say it. You know already, anyway. You have to know already."

Steve hadn't. But that was close enough. He smiled, helpless, too wide, every part of his face; every part of himself—and it was clumsy, too many teeth, when he kissed Tony again, but he didn't mind, and he was pretty sure Tony didn't either.


End file.
